VITAL DYNAMICS 

THE HUNTERIAN ORATION BEFORE THE ROYAL 

COLLEGE OF SURGEONS IN LONDON 

14th FEBRUARY 1840 



VITAL DYNAMICS 

THE HUNTERIAN ORATION BEFORE THE ROYAL 

COLLEGE OF SURGEONS IN LONDON 

14th FEBRUARY 1840 

/ 
BY JOSEPH HENRY GREEN F. R. S. 

LATE PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND SURGERY TO THE COLLEGE : PRO- 
FESSOR OF ANATOMY TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY : ONE OF 
THE SURGEONS TO ST. TIlOMAS's HOSPITAL 







LONDON 
WILLIAM PICKEIUNG 

1B40 



^ 



ix.^'^^ 



^1 



Cr^Q^ 



C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, 






PREFACE. 

Notwithstanding the favourable testimony 
of friends, on whose judgment I rely, to the 
success of the Oration which I now offer to 
the candid and impartial criticism of those 
engaged in scientific pursuits, I shall neither 
be surprised nor offended, if it should appear 
that some of my auditors deemed it unsuited 
to the occasion on which it was delivered, or, 
that many of my readers consider it unsuited 
to any occasion. I cannot conceal from my- 
self the fact, that the students of philosophy, 
to whom I address myself, are few in number ; 
and that in this country men, even of appa- 
rently high cultivation, turn with scorn or in- 
difference from what are called metaphysical 
pursuits. And if indeed, by the term meta- 
physics, we designate unmeaning subtleties, 
vague fancies, and, in general, speculations 
which properly transcend the human faculties, 
we might well be content to turn from them 
as a mere waste of time and abuse of the mind. 
But if by this term we mean (as in all reason 
we should) that which, in contradistinction to 
sensuous facts and appearances, is therefore 



VI PREFACE. 



supersensuous, because it can be no object of 
the senses, and necessarily includes the prin- 
ciples which legitimately give to the results 
of sensuous experience their connexion and 
intelligibility, — the demand will scarcely ap- 
pear extravagant, if we ask the students of 
natural science to examine the philosophical 
grounds of the postulates and data from which 
they proceed ; and to subject to philosophical 
criticism the reasonings necessary to their in- 
ferences and conclusions, nay, the very lan- 
guage in and by which they convey and re- 
cord the results of their experience. 

The aim of this address is avowedly to aid 
the student in this requisite inquiry, and, I do 
not hesitate to add, in the indispensable duty 
of this TrpoTratSeta and preparatory discipline of 
science. That the attempt to penetrate, for 
this purpose, into a region of thought, little, 
alas! frequented by the English reader, will 
expose me to the charge of obscurity, almost 
inseparable from the nature of the under- 
taking, I have as little ground to doubt as dis- 
position to avoid ; and should it proceed merely 
from the mental indolence which too often 
induces the many to reject truth, because it is 
irreconcilable with their prejudices and pre- 
vious habits of thinking, I shall be ready to 
bear the imputation without attempting either 
defence or apology. I am not, indeed, vain 



PREFACE. VU 

enough to imagine that, had the limits of the 
Address permitted it, my powers would have 
enabled me to set forth the truths, which I 
proposed to vindicate, in the clear and con- 
vincing manner to which they are entitled. 
Any obscurity arising from defects of my own 
I should be ready at all times to confess : and 
no less, should the charge of perplexity and 
obscurity be substantiated by the exposure 
of error or ignorance, of erroneous statements 
or inconclusive reasonings, will the same love 
of truth, which inspired the courage to avow 
my conviction, prompt me to admit, without 
hesitation, their falsehood or imperfections. 

If, however, after a more careful investigation 
of the grounds of natural science, it should, on 
the other hand, appear that the charge of ob- 
scurity may be more fitly retorted on a philo- 
sophy, tacitly, if not openly, adopted as the 
guide of observation and experiment, which, 
if I am not grossly deceived, has retarded the 
progress of science by fictions, fancies, and 
arbitrary assumptions, it will not be an un- 
founded hope, that the prejudices will be dis- 
missed which have hitherto prevented the 
admission of the Dynamic Principles here in- 
culcated. The limits of a preface forbid the 
attempt to expose the inconsistencies and con- 
tradictions that perplex and bewilder the mind, 
in the futile endeavours to construct a scheme 



Vlll PREFACE. 

of the facts and phsenomena of nature from 
merely sensuous data ; though it would not be 
difficult to shew, that the pretended appeal to 
the senses is, in many instances, merely the 
substitution of the sensuous fancy for expe- 
rience, and of pictures and figments for sen- 
suous realities. What other name, for instance, 
than that of a figment can w^e give to the so 
called " matter" of physical reasoners? For 
the notion of a materia prima, — of a substance, 
standing sub appareutibus,— oi a noumenon in 
contradistinction to its phcenomenon, — supposes 
something beyond the qualities and forces with 
which it may have been endowed, and by 
means of which only it can act upon us, or 
become thereby a possible object of sensuous 
experience: and what possible object, con- 
ceptual or sensible, can remain after the ab- 
straction of all and every property? How can 
we imagine even this residuum, except by mis- 
taking the effort of straining the fancy for the 
notion it strives to realize? Has the natural 
philosopher satisfied himself that he derives 
any advantage in behoof of physics from the 
assumption of a material substratum? Will 
not some doubt mingle with his belief in ex- 
amining this question, when he considers that 
our great Newton could admit that the par- 
ticles of matter are infinitely small in propor- 
tion to the distances between them ; and that 



PREFACE. IX 

Others have thought it no objection to the 
doctrine, that the material universe might be 
compressed within the compass of a nutshell ? 
Will he find any authority or support for the 
opinion in the speculations of the materialist, 
Priestley, who leaves us in doubt whether the 
question between matter and spirit be not a 
mere verbal dispute? Let me entreat him, 
lastly, to weigh, whether the investigations of 
physics are not ever really and truly directed 
to the powers and forces with which matter 
is endowed, rather than to this imagined sub- 
stratuiUy which the modern science of physics 
at least is content to keep out of view, as far 
as its doubtful nature renders it desirable, 
and to waive the boast of Ralpho, w ho 

** profest 
He had First Matter seen undrest : 
He took her naked, all alone, 
Before one ra«j of form was on." 

It is very true that the metaphysical question 
of the nature of the matter is one which has 
been lost sight of, or banished, by modern 
physics, and that the experimental school has 
been content to take matter as a daliim unex- 
plained, or not requiring elucidation. It is, 
however, more than a question, whether the 
inherent difficulties of a sensuous and essen- 
tially mechanical philosophy of nature have 
been removed, by substituting or giving pro- 
minence to the Aloinic Docli inc. 



X PREFACE. 

The modern experimentalist assumes or be- 
lieves that the material constitution of the 
universe essentially consists in an original 
number of physical atoms, each distinguished 
by its specific properties; that these are so 
aggregated as to constitute bodies ; that the 
physical atoms are so disposed, arranged and 
connected, as to produce the differences of 
solid, with all the modifications of density, of 
liquid and aeriform, and that in all instances 
they are disposed segregately with interstices, 
which permit the permeation of the body by 
other material molecules, and allow of separa- 
tion, division, or reconj unction, without change 
or destruction of the individual molecules. 
Now it is very true that the supposed nature 
and arrangement of the atoms answer two very 
important purposes, and offer a sensuous in- 
tuition on the one hand, of the porosity, per- 
meability and separability, and on the other, 
of the solidity, impenetrability, and continuity 
of bodily existence ; and the condition under 
which such phenomena are possible, is un- 
doubtedly a necessary postulate of the human 
mind. But it by no means follows that the 
atomic constitution of matter is the condition 
which justifies and necessitates its assumption. 
In order to conceive a body, its composition 
and decomposition, it is necessary to contem- 
plate it as a possible partible and continuum. 



PREFACE. XI 

But what, after all, is this but to say, that an 
extended whole or body must be conceived as 
separable or divisible into parts, and that, 
viewing the whole as an aggregate of parts, 
that which we predicate of all must be predi- 
cated of each ? Does the atomic doctrine bring 
us one whit nearer to a solution of the remark- 
able fact of the interpenetration of aeriform 
bodies, of their rapid diffusion through each 
other's masses, so that there is no limit to their 
incorporation ; — *' one gas," as Dalton ex- 
presses it, '* acting as a vacuum with respect to 
another?" Does it add any insight into the 
nature of the quantitative minima in the 
combining ingredients of chemical compounds, 
which the law of definite proportions has dis- 
closed ? It may be convenient for the natural 
philosopher to call these parts elementary 
molecules or atoms, but he should never forget 
that these physical atoms are contrivances of 
the sensuous imagination, for the purpose of 
presenting the constitution and changes of 
bodies as an image ; or, if he forget it, he must 
be reminded that, so far from explaining the 
material constitution of bodies, they are, in 
truth, themselves little bodies, of which the 
parts just as much require explanation as those 
of larger; and that the difficulty would be the 
same in respect of a mote dancing in the sun- 
beam, as of the solar system itself, if, how- 



Xll PREFACE. 

ever, the atomic doctrine pretends to be more 
than a language, the naturalist will find that 
he has only exchanged the inconvenient specu- 
lation regarding matter for the no less intract- 
able problem which body offers, and which 
the assumption of physical atoms renders no- 
wise intelligible ; an exchange, oppressed with 
similar difficulties, and which must ever beset 
a natural philosophy appealing to the senses 
for facts that cannot be matters of experience, 
referring to the authority of the senses for 
data that are beyond the capability of the 
senses to determine, and — not the least of the 
difficulties, — endowing these molecules with 
forces that render the physical atoms them- 
selves the superfluous accessories of a natural 
philosophy too lazy to investigate its primary 
data and postulates, and to render them con- 
sistent with each other. 

If it should be objected that the experi- 
mentalist finds no necessity for troubling him- 
self with metaphysical questions, which he 
assumes to lie beyond the sphere within which 
he limits his exertions, and that he adopts the 
atomic, or other theory, only as a convenient 
hypothesis, or serviceable language, for con- 
veying or recording a knowledge of the facts 
which he observes, or has the good fortune to 
discover, — that, in short, they answer a logical 
purpose, which it would be difficult otherwise 



PREFACE. XIII 

to supply, in contemplating the constitution 
and changes of Nature ; let him bear in mind 
that he is adopting a picture language, which, 
like the paintings on the walls of Egyptian 
tombs, or like Mr. Bowles' Bibles, may have 
the advantage of vividly affecting the senses, 
but is incapable of expressing more or other 
than what affects the senses ; and therefore (if 
our views be correct) calculated to withdraw the 
mind from the true objects of physical inquiry, 
namely, powers, forces, causes, laws the at- 
tempt to express which adequately in a lan- 
guage of the senses cannot but be a failure, 
attended with the disadvantage of misleading 
the mind from the true aims of inductive 
science. Shall we not, however, rather say 
that hypotheses, as founded upon arbitrary or 
insufficient data, are positive causes of error, 
and by the false semblance of knowledge, re- 
tard the progress of science. Opinions neces- 
sarily influence the statement of facts, and 
may keep us in ignorance of the truth, and 
perpetuate error, unless they have been pre- 
viously subjected to philosophical criticism. 
It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader 
of the mischief of hypothetical reasoning, and 
how much farther its influence may extend 
beyond a mere logical mode of connecting 
facts, in the instances of the protracted autho- 
rity of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. 



Xiv PREFACE. 

of the doctrine of the elements and humors 
in medicine, and of the mechanical physiology 
of the school of Boerhaave ; — and equivalent 
examples are not wanting in modern times, of 
which the acidifying principle of Lavoisier's 
Chemistry is a notable instance. It may be 
said, indeed, that the errors here adduced were 
corrected by a further and more searching 
appeal to sensuous experience ; but were I 
bound to grant the objection, I might still ask ; 
— Whence did the errors originate, except in 
the too exclusive authority of the senses, and of 
the faculty judging according to sense ; and 
what is to guard us in future against similar 
errors, except a philosophy which, in deter- 
mining the grounds and aims of natural science, 
shall render the human mind consistent with 
itself, as the proof of its coincidence with uni- 
versal and permanent truth. 

This then was the primary object of this 
Address, to recommend the study of Nature, in 
the light of a dynamic philosophy, as a scheme 
of Causes and Laws in the unity and with the 
connections of reason. And in aid of this 
purpose, I flatter myself that I have rendered 
an acceptable service to the student of natural 
science, in drawing his attention to the all im- 
portant distinction of the Reason and Under- 
standing, which has been so ably and fully 
elucidated by the philosophic acumen of Cole* 



PREFACF. XV 

ridge, and which, though recognized by our 
elder writers, and adopted by the philosophers 
of Germany, has been lost sight of or neg- 
lected by the more recent cultivators of intel- 
lectual philosophy in our country. And in 
order to this dynamic method, we have urged 
the student to penetrate deeper than the mere 
surfaces offered to his senses ; and to unsen- 
sualize his mind, by contemplating the powers 
working in and to the phcetiomena, which are 
their signs and results ; and we earnestly ex- 
hort him not to take the mere data of sensuous 
intuition as the only legitimate objects of 
knowledge, and cognitions, extrinsic and sen- 
suous, as the limits beyond which it w^ould 
be idle to push his inquiries. But if these 
views claim the serious attention of all those 
who are engaged in pursuits which have the 
operations and changes of nature for their 
object, most especially are they forced on the 
consideration of those who, in the study of 
living agents and of organic being, are per- 
petually reminded that the realities which 
they seek are not the immediate objects of 
the senses. What is it that constitutes the 
reality of our body, or of any organ of the 
body, say the eye? Is it to be sought in the 
materials of which it is composed? ** No- 
thing," says Coleridge, *' would be more easy 
than so to construct tlie paper, ink, painted 



XVI PREFACE. 

capitals, and the like, of a printed disquisi- 
tion on the eye, or the muscles and cellular 
texture (that is, the flesh) of the human body, 
as to bring together every one of the sensible 
and ponderable stuffs or elements, that are 
sensuously perceived in the eye itself, or in 
the flesh itself. Carbon and nitrogen, oxygen 
and hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and one 
or two metals and metallic bases, constitute 
the whole. It cannot be these, therefore, that 
we mean by an eye, by our body. But perhaps 
it may be a particular combination of these ? 
But here comes a question : In this term do 
you or do you not include the principle, the 
operating cause, of the combination ? If not, 
then detach this eye from the body. Look 
steadily at it — as it might lie on the marble 
slab of a dissecting room. Say it were the eye 
of a murderer, a Bellingham : or the eye of 
a murdered patriot, a Sidney ! — Behold it, 
handle it, with its various accompaniments or 
constituent parts, of tendon, ligament, mem- 
brane, blood-vessel, gland, humors ; its nerves 
of sense, of sensation, and of motion. Alas ! 
all these names, like that of the organ itself, 
are so many anachronisms, figures of speech, 
to express that which has been : as when the 
guide points with his finger to a heap of stones, 
and tells the traveller, ' That is Babylon, or 
Persepolis.' — Is this cold jelly * the light of 



PREFACE. XVII 

the body?' Is this the micranthropos in the 
marvellous microcosm ? Is this what you mean 
when you well define the eye as the telescope 
and the mirror of the soul, the seat and agent 
of an almost magical power? 

" Pursue the same inquisition with every 
other part of the body, whether integral or 
simply ingredient ; and let a Berzelius or a 
Hatchett be your interpreter, and demonstrate 
to you what it is that in each actually meets 
your senses. And when you have heard the 
scanty catalogue, ask yourself if these are in- 
deed the living flesh, the blood of life? Or not 
far rather — I speak of what, as a man of com- 
mon sense, you really do, not what, as a phi- 
losopher, you ought to believe — is it not, I 
say, far rather the distinct and individualized 
agency that by the given combinations utters 
and bespeaks its presence? Justly and with 
strictest propriety of language may I say, 
speaks. It is to the coarseness of our senses, 
or rather to the defect and limitation of our 
percipient faculty, that the visible object ap- 
pears the same even for a moment. The cha- 
racters which I am now shaping on this paper 
abide. Not only the forms remain the same, 
but the particles of the coloring stuff are fixed, 
and, for an indefinite j)eriod at least, remain 
the same. But the partichs that constitute 
the size, the visibility, of an or<ranic structure 

h 



XVlll PREFACE. 

are in perpetual flux. They are to the com- 
bining and constitutive power as the pulses of 
air to the voice of a discourser ; or of one who 
sings a roundelay. The same words may be 
repeated ; but in each second of time the arti- 
culated air hath passed away, and each act of 
articulation appropriates and gives momentary 
form to a new and other portion. As the 
column of blue smoke from a cottage chimney 
in the breathless summer noon, or the stedfast- 
seeming cloud on the edge-point of a hill in 
the driving air-current, which momently con- 
densed and recomposed is the common phan- 
tom of a thousand successors; — such is the 
flesh which our bodily eyes transmit to us ; 
which our palates taste; which our hands 
touch. 

" But perhaps the material particles possess 
this combining power by inherent reciprocal 
attractions, repulsions, and elective affinities ; 
and are themselves the joint artists of their 
own combinations? I will not reply, though 
well I might, that this would be to solve one 
problem by another, and merely to shift the 
mystery. It will be sufficient to remind the 
thoughtful querist, that even herein consists 
the essential difference, the contradistinction, 
of an organ from a machine; that not only 
the characteristic shape is evolved from the 
invisible central power, but the material mass 



PREFACE. 



itself is acquired by assimilation. The germinal 
power of the plant transmutes the fixed air and 
the elementary base of water into grass or 
leaves ; and on these the organific principle in 
the ox or the elephant exercises an alchemy 
still more stupendous. As the unseen agency 
weaves its magic eddies, the foliage becomes 
indifferently the bone and its marrow, the 
pulpy brain, or the solid ivory. That what you 
see is blood, is flesh, is itself the work, or shall 
I say, the translucence, of the invisible energy, 
which soon surrenders or abandons them to 
inferior powers, (for there is no pause nor 
chasm in the activities of Nature) which re- 
peat a similar metamorphosis according to 
their kind ; — these are not fancies, conjec- 
tures, or even hypotheses, but facts ; to deny 
which is impossible, not to reflect on which is 
ignominious. And we need only reflect on 
them with a calm and silent spirit to learn the 
utter emptiness and unmeaningness of the 
vaunted INIechanico-corpuscular philosophy, 
with both its twins, Materialism on the one 
hand, and Idealism, rightlier named subjective 
Idolism,on the other: the one obtruding on us 
a world of spectres and aj)pariti()ns ; the other 
a mazy dream !" 

I will not, however, concc^al from my readers 
that J have had an ulterior object in the fol- 
lowin": address, and — in addition to its |)urpose, 



XX PREFACE. 

in connection with the intention of the founders 
of the Hunterian Oration, of vindicating the 
original merit of John Hunter as a philoso- 
phical physiologist, — that it was composed with 
a view to the larger design, to which his labors 
most importantly contributed, of reconciling 
the study of Nature with the requirements of 
our moral being, and of connecting science, — 
which even as the noblest offspring of our 
intellect is but a fragment of our humanity, — 
with the philosophy of Coleridge ; which, as far 
as my knowledge extends, pre-eminently, if 
not alone, gives life and reality to metaphysical 
pursuits, by showing their birth, growth, and 
requisite foundation in the whole man, head 
and heart. It must be reserved, indeed, for 
a more suitable occasion, to set forth with 
fuller and clearer evidence the comprehensive 
scheme and method of its great and good Au- 
thor, as far as such a supplement may be 
necessary to his inestimable published writings ; 
and I am not without hope that sufficient will 
have been done in this address to convince the 
student of the true import of the doctrine of 
Ideas, as eternal truths, which are, indeed, 
actuating powers, in the faith of the correlation 
of the human mind with the Divine Reason, 
with that Intelligence whose thoughts are acts, 
with that Mind which is the identity of truth 
and reality. 



PREFACE. XXI 

It is in aid of this more vital philosophy, 
that the doctrine of Ideas has been introduced: 
and if the word sound strangely to those for 
whom " Idea"' has no other meaning than, 
** w^hatsoever is the object of the understanding 
when a man thinks,"* — the advantage of ex- 
changing it would be equivocal ; since this 
term, or some substitute less authorized by 
philosophical usage, is imperatively required 
in dynamic philosophy, in order to designate 
powers as predetermining and constructive, as 
intelligential acts, ^wa/iisig voipal Kal voi^rai, and 
as formce formaules, or laws. It is however 
worthy of notice, that the necessity of con- 
veying the meaning here intended has led to 
the adoption of expressions, the familiar use 
of w^liich, whilst it renders them less prefer- 
able for a technical purpose, happily aids us 
in explaining the peculiar force of the term 
" Idea," in accordance with the usage of the 
Platonic School, in which it first acquired cur- 
rency. I'hus the word '* Principle" is some- 
times employed as in some respects equivalent 
to Idea; and it will be admitted that if this 
term have any appropriate meaning, it is that 
of a causative first, which predetermines its 
consequents and results, and therefore poten- 
tially contains them, — that is, has the power of 

* Ix)cke, Human Umleibtanding, chap. i. ^. 8. 



XXU PREFACE. 

producing them, though the power may not 
have been actually exerted in realizing them. 
We speak of the *' principles" of moral con- 
duct, and assign to the agent a good or bad 
principle, as that which influences or prede- 
termines his actions. Again, we infer a " prin- 
ciple" of vitality in all living beings, as that 
which, antecedent in order of operance to any 
visible product, is the power which builds up 
the living fabric, and remains as its conser- 
vative " principle" or energy : nay, where the 
term is used sensu improprio, as when morphia 
in opium is called its active " principle," still 
we mean the power which produces and acts 
in and by the so called material substance. It 
will be seen then, that the term is used for the 
purpose of designating the character of a pri- 
mal causative, which is known by, and pre- 
supposed in, the results which it produces 
and predetermines. 

Another example of a term sometimes sub- 
stituted for Idea, we find in the word " Spirit," 
as it is not unfrequently employed ; for both 
alike may designate a one power, manifesting 
itself in a diversity of forms, and in a manifold 
of changing results. Thus we speak of the 
** Spirit or Idea of the British Constitution :" 
and though the Idea has perhaps never been 
distinctly recognized, or raised into distinct 
consciousness, if indeed we except in the Idea 



PREFACE. XXUl 

of Church and State, by Coleridge ; yet, mean- 
while the seed, semen genet icum, having found 
an appropriate soil, has grown and evolved 
itself, as it were, by a blind and silent life ; and, 
notwithstanding the occasional frost-blight, the 
shock of the blast, and the stroke of the 
lightning, has reared itself amid faction, inva- 
sion, and revolution, into a growth as stately 
as the native oak of its soil. And I have still 
faith enough in the English heart of my coun- 
try to believe, that, as long as its *^ Spirit" 
remains national, in that best sense of the 
word nation, which respects not a particular 
generation, — not the people at one time ex- 
isting, but the unity of the generations, the 
type of our inward humanity in the flux of 
our outward mortality, — the Constitution will 
continue to expand, prosper, and perfect itself 
harmoniously as by an organic life. In like 
manner, the use of the phrase, the *' Spirit of 
the Scriptures" is accompanied by no fear of 
being misunderstood : we appeal to the one 
spirit pervading them as evidence of the inspira- 
tion of the writers, and we refer confidently all 
its recorded events, all its prophetic assurances, 
promised blessings and awful denunciations, 
all its precepts, doctrinal and practical, all that 
elevates hope, enlightens faith, or enlivens 
charity, in its radiant pages, — we attribute all 
its varied workings to One Holy Power, re- 



XXIV PREFACE. 

vealing Himself as the moral Providence of 
the world in the redemption of humanity. 

Again, the terms, " Type, Pattern, Exem- 
plar, Model, TrapaSay^a," havc been used as in 
some degree synonymous with Idea, since they 
imply that, according to which any result or 
product is perfected. This may be illustrated 
by the conception of an artist working ac- 
cording to a pattern, or ideal in his mind ; and 
thus, a Praxiteles in forming a statue embody- 
ing all that is lovely in the female form, or a 
Fra Angelico, in realizing his supposed vision 
of the ^eatified Virgin, might be said to have 
an Idea in his mind, which was the '' standard" 
according to which he judged of female forms ; 
the ** pattern" according to which he worked ; 
and the " ultimate end" which he had proposed 
to himself from the beginning, and had guided 
his labors throughout. Though we may say 
to the artist, as well as to the philosopher, in 
the words of Scripture, And look that thou 
make them after theii pattern, which ivas shelved 
thee in the mount,^ — For the demand is here no 
less than that of giving a living presence to that, 
of which all the forms within our experience 
are but approximations ; and if, therefore, such 
ideal types can be contemplamina for the human 
mind, they must be derived from a higher 



* ExoduSy XXV. 40. 



PREFACE. XXV 

source, and more excellent birth-place; and 
whether we look to the works of nature or to 
the Ideas, which actuate man in his strivings, 
and become for him the ultimate aims that 
guide his endeavors towards perfection in his 
acts and deeds, we cannot but admit that the 
end and aim are present, and contained in the 
intention and design at the commencement, 
predetermine the means to their attainment, 
and secure the result. Such then is an Idea ; 
and we may describe it as a causative prin- 
ciple, combining both power and intelligence, 
containing, predetermining, and producing its 
actual result in all its manifold relations, in 
reference to a final purpose ; and realized in a 
whole of parts, in which the Idea, as the con- 
stitutive energy, is evolved and set forth in its 
unity, totality, finality, and permanent effi- 
ciency. 

In the ensuing discourse, an attempt has 
been made to determine the import of Ideas, 
in connexion with the powers of nature, as a 
scheme of living forces ; and the term has been 
employed to designate those energic acts of 
C)mnii)otent wisdom, which, as laws of nature, 
forma; fonnantes, are at once creative and con- 
servative of a nature, ever changing, and yet 
ever essentially the same. If we contemj)latc 
them as thoughts of the Divine Intelligence, 
they arc Ideas, the archetypes and preexisting 



XXVI PREFACE. 

models ; if as acts of the Divine Will mani- 
fested in nature, they are laws. But the 
student, in humbly raising his apprehension to 
the Supreme source of Ideas, must never forget 
the Divine Unity, nor the identity therein of 
unerring Intelligence, which transcends choice, 
and of Omnipotent Will, causative of all 
reahty, in eternal act transcending all pause 
of deliberation. In surveying the works of 
nature as the impress of Perfect Wisdom, 
which is Almighty Power, and whose thoughts 
are acts ; no breach of unity may be conceived 
in the design and realization, and we can only 
say that the will of God is, — at once actualized, 
and in one act identifying originative power, 
final intention, and completed reality, in its 
highest perfection of being. God does, and 
then sees that it is good ; for that which is 
done, can be only the reflex of the perfect 
agent. 

Although it would be here out of place to 
attempt to reconcile the discrepancies of com- 
mentators on the Platonic Ideas, enough, it is 
hoped, has been done, in evolving the essential 
character of a law of nature, to rescue the 
speculations of Plato from the opprobrium of 
extravagance, even of absurdity, which has 
been too often imputed to them, and to vindi- 
cate, as far as sound philosophy may sanction 
it, his doctrine; — that Ideas, IBiaiy are the eter- 



PREFACE. XXVU 

iial types, TrapaSa'y^iara, in the divine mind, 
according to which, and the principles, apy^ai, 
by the efficiency of which, all things became ; 
and which Ideas, infused into the human 
mind, and recognized by a sort of recollection, 
it is the business of philosophy to bring into 
distinct consciousness. St. Augustine has with 
better wisdom, indeed, assigned a more suffi- 
cient cause than memory for their presence in 
the minds of men, in saying: ** Credibilius est 
quia prcesens est eis, quantum id capere possuiit. 
Lumen Rationis ceterncB, nbi hcec immutabilia 
vera conspiciunt, non quod noverant aliquando et 
obliti sunt, quod Platoni vel talibus visum est.''* 
For, in truth, it is a statement of the Christian 
doctrine, that the Word, by whom all things 
were made, is essential light and life to his 

creatures \ — iravra St avTOv eyiviTOf /cat \<^piQ avrov 
tyevtTO oi»o£ tv o yiyovi:V. Ev aiiTio ^w?) r)v, Kai t) ^w^ 
7/ J' TO (l>ior TLJV avOf)tL>ir(i)v. Jolin, cli. i. V. .*3, 4. As 

a farther exposition of the same doctrine, we 
otter the following definition by Coleridge : 
** That which contemplated objectively, (that 
is, as existing externally to the mind,) we call 
a Law ; the same contemplated subjectively, 
(that is, as existing in a subject or mind,) is an 
Idea. Hence Plato often names Ideas, laws ; 
and Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes 

" Retract, lib. i, caj). -1. 



XXVIU PREFACE. 

the laws of the material universe as the Ideas 
in nature. Quod in natura naturata lex, in 
natura naturante idea dicitur.''^ And it is in 
accordance with this truth that I have endea- 
vored to show in the following Address, that, 
as all within the sphere of our sensible expe- 
rience bears the character of the transient and 
fluxive, it is only by the aid of the Reason, 
^wc TO dXriOivov, that we are enabled to look 
beyond and deeper, to discover the laws which 
give permanence and regularity, to discern the 
eternal Ideas, which are the regulating types 
and standards of a nature ever tending to lapse 
into the imperfect and arbitrary, and to raise 
ourselves to the contemplation of the true 
causes, the divine acts themselves, which, in 
our experience of the sensible world, are 
hidden under the veil of the unreal and perish- 
ing representatives of the realities, from which 
they are derived. 

* Church and State, p. 12. Edited by H. N. Coleridge, 
1 839. Compare The Statesman's Manual, Appendix E. 

And the following" comment on the Platonic doctrine, though 
not unobjectionable in its phraseology, may be acceptable 
to the reader, as offering* a different kind of illustration : 
*' La theorie Platonicienne est Vunite de Vexistence univer- 
selle, par consequent Vharmonie de Vesprit hurnain et de la 
nature, des conceptions de Vun et du plan de Vautre, et le 
double caractcre de Videe, prise au sens de Platon, comme 
conception generale dans le sujet pensant, et comme lot ou 
forme gtnerale dans Vohjet externeJ" V. Cousin Metaphy- 
sique d'Aristote, p. 49. 



PREFACE. XXIX 

Lastly, if the Author has succeeded in 
drawing the attention of the student to the 
import of Ideas, and in exhibiting their im- 
portance in aid of a dynamic method of a 
philosophy and science of nature, he cannot 
better conclude this prefatory address, than by 
a passage from Schelling, in the language of 
Coleridge : " The highest perfection of natural 
philosophy would consist in the perfect spi- 
ritualization of all the laws of nature into laws 
of intuition and intellect. The phcenomena 
rthe material) must wholly disappear, and the 
laws alone (the formal) must remain. Thence 
it comes, that in nature itself the more the 
principle of law breaks forth, the more does 
the husk drop off, the plicenomena themselves 
become more spiritual, and, at length, cease 
altogether in our consciousness. The optical 
phcenomena are but a geometry, the lines of 
which are drawn by light, and the materiality 
of this light itself has already become matter 
of doubt. In the appearances of magnetism, 
all trace of matter is lost, and of the phceno- 
mena of gravitation, which not a few among 
the most illustrious Newtonians have declared 
no otherwise comprehensible than as an imme- 
diate spiritual influence, there remains nothing 
but its law, the execution of which, on a vast 
scale, is the mechanism of the heavcMily mo- 
tions. The theory of natural i)hilosophy would 



XXX PREFACE. 

then be completed, when all nature was de- 
monstrated to be identical in essence with that 
which, in its highest known power, exists in 
man as intelligence and self-consciousness; 
when the heavens and the earth shall declare 
not only the power of their Maker, but the 
glory and the presence of their God, even as 
He appeared to the great prophet during the 
vision of the mount, in the skirts of his di- 
vinity."* 

* Biographia Literaria, v. i. p. 257. 



CONTENTS. 



HuNTERiAN Oration 3 

Appendix A. Evolution of the Idea of Power 51 

B. Transcendental Anatomy 56 

C. Gradation of Animal Life 58 

D. Characteristics of Man's Bodily Frame. . 60 

E. Hunter's Pathology 79 

F. Instinct 88 

Recapitulatory Lecture , 97 



HUNTERIAN ORATION. 

MDCCCXL. 



Prudeotibus haec Patis foie, imprudentibus auteni ne plura 
quideni. BACON, NOVUM organum. 



HUNTERIAN ORATION. 



MR. PRKSIDENT AND GENTLEMEN. 

On this, tlie twenty-fiftli, occasion of our 
assembling to commemorate the birth of John 
Hunter, by renewing our acknowledgment 
of his merits, — an occasion signalized by the 
presence of a gracious Prince,* whose many 
personal claims on our loyal affection are 
enforced by gratitude to the revered Monarch, 
his excellent and illustrious father, to whom 
this College owes its existence, — on this the 
twenty-fifth commemorative occasion, 1 might 
claim some indulgence in the performance of 
the duty entrusted to me, when I remind you 
of the ditiiculty which the talents and elo- 
(pience of more than twenty predecessors have 
imposed on the task. But, though I do not 
hesitate to solicit your forbearance in a com- 
parison, which 1 fear would prove unfavour- 
able to him who has now the honour of ad- 
<lressing you, I dare not attempt to vindicate 
my inability to do justice to Hunter's eminent 
merits by pleading any diminution in tlic in- 
terest, still less any exhaustion of the materials 

♦ H. R. H. the Duke of Cambridge. 



THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 



of the subject, however frequently set forth 
and impressively urged. The discoveries of 
science, the triumphs of genius, the revelation 
of truth, seem to partake of the permanent 
being, which is their source ; they are peren- 
nial, living growths, which ever put forth anew 
their foliage, blossom, and golden fruit ; and 
we collect from year to year the harvest, that 
owes its birth to those divine seeds of wisdom, 
which the gifted individuals of our race have 
been permitted to plant, which have been 
watered by the dews of heaven, and have been 
fostered by the light and genial warmth of a 
sun, that sheds on them the blessing of Pro- 
vidence. 

Among those individuals, to whom have 
been granted creative genius, power of insight^ 
and the faculty of interpreting the Laws^ by 
which their divine Author works in Nature, — 
among the foremost of those favoured indi- 
viduals may be ranked the great man whonx 
we now meet to honour. We claim for him 
the enlightened approbation of those whose 
scientific attainments enable them to appre- 
ciate his transcendant merits : we claim for 
him the gratitude of mankind : and, if it be in 
any proportion to the benefit conferred, they 
will award to him the name of a benefactor, as 
having enlarged the boundaries, multiplied the 
resources, and elevated the aims of a science, 
eminently calculated for the benefit, and ex- 
clusively devoted to remove or alleviate the 



CONNECTED W ITH VITAL DYNAMICS. O 

ills, of suffering man. If, however, our praise 
is to be discriminative and appropriate to the 
occasion, we must essay, in the humble hope 
of some inspiration of the same power, to scan 
the genius which animated and directed his 
bold, original, and profound researches, and to 
trace, with kindred spirit, the mind of him who 
conceived, planned, and, in a great measure, 
constructed (what yet indeed remains to be 
fully achieved) the mighty work of a philo- 
sophy and science of life and living being. 
The mere personal character of the man has, 
meanwhile, almost ceased to be a matter of 
interest ; of those who personally knew him, 
whom we regard with the affectionate re- 
verence due to those who have communed 
with a gifted seer, there still linger only a few 
amongst us; and even now it is my painful 
duty to remind you of the loss of one of these 
distinguished pupils of Hunter, of one whose 
memory is hallowed to me by recollections of 
personal and of family friendship. 

Edward Coleman had shown early in his 
professional career originality and ability in 
physiological research ; and having obtained, 
at the joint recommendation of Mr. Hunter 
and of Mr. Cline, the appointment of professor 
at the Veterinary College, he was thereby 
enabled at once to follow his favourite pursuits, 
and to j)r()nH)te the interests of the profession 
to which he had become attached. And it is 
not too much to say, that it wns cniincntly, 



b THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

by the Hunterian Physiology, evinced in his 
lectures and published works, that the veteri- 
nary art, in being based on its proper science, 
has been elevated in this country into a pro- 
fession, and that its practitioners have thereby 
obtained that title to the rank of gentlemen, 
which mainly, at his instance, was recognized 
by the Government in granting to veterinary 
surgeons commissions as officers of cavalry. 
The charm of Professor Coleman's intellectual 
character was its freshness, originality, and 
enthusiasm ; he had that instinctive philo- 
sophy which consists in the unprepossessed 
susceptibility to, and love of, truth ; and we 
shall not withhold from him the attribute of 
genius, if (as has been happily said) its cha- 
racter be that of the " feelings of childhood 
taken up and matured into the powers of man- 
hood."^ In his social intercourse he was play- 
fid, unassuming, genial, and amiable. His 
amenity of manners and kindness of dispo- 
sition continually engaged new friends, whilst 
he ever cherished those attachments which he 
had once formed : and by all those who en- 
joyed his friendship and knew his worth, his 
memory will be preserved in that enduring 
regret, in which grief disguises itself as the 
fond remembrance of the excellence it laments. 
That those of Hunter's pupils whom he has 
left behind for our respect and affection may 

* Coleridge's Biog". Lit. I. 85. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 7 

long continue to cheer us by their presence, be 
our fervent prayer ! But with them the imme- 
diate interest in the peculiarities of the private 
and personal character of the man himself 
must cease. Henceforward the name of John 
Hunter will remain as the symbol of a produc- 
tive power and of a constructive function in the 
organic development of science: and it is my 
intention, on the present occasion, in support 
of this larger and more permanent ground of 
interest, and in behalf of Hunter's claims as a 
medical philosopher, to address you on the 
scientific Idea or aim which guided his physio- 
logical investigations, in connexion with the 
philosophical grounds of natural science : — not 
unmindful of the lessons of my great teacher 
and revered friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
who long since earned the gratitude of the ad- 
mirers of Hunter by asserting the dynamic 
spirit of his views, and who stands pre-eminent 
in our country in recalling its better minds 
from that sensual misnamed philosophy, that 
tendency to empiricism and empirical novel- 
ties, unsteadied by science, in wliicli a 
specious name of Utility usurps the Idea of 
fontal and abiding Good : 

Yea, oft alone, 
Piorcing- the lont^- neglected holy cave, 
The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, 
We hade with lifted torch its starry walls 
Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame 
Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Saj^e. 
O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts ! 



D THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

O studious Poet, eloquent for truth ! 
Philosopher ! contemning wealth and death, 
Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love !"* 

And if the contemplation of Nature is to be 
other and more than a mere description of 
appearances, a catalogue raisonne of facts^ 
or a memoria technica of phsenomena, formed 
by generalization and classification ; if it aim 
at connexion and unity, it requires an appeal 
to philosophy, in order that insight may be 
superadded to sightf The business of philo- 
sophy, I say, is to discover truths^ which, as 
first principles, are to give intelligibility, and 
which, therefore, cannot be deduced from the 
facts of experience, which they are intended 
to explain, and to which they are to give 
unity and connexion: — they are truths su- 

* Coleridge's Poet. Works, vol. i. p. 201. 

■\ Intellectual unity is indeed supplied by science ; but science 
can be predicated only of any scheme of knowledge, connected 
as a chain of necessarily dependent truths, so that any link of 
the chain being given, any other may be deduced as a neces- 
sary consequence of the principle, which determines the rela- 
tions of all, and which gives to its possessor the power of antici- 
pating and predicting its results in any given case. And if the 
essential character of science consists in the necessary connec- 
tion and dependency of the links in any scheme of knowledge, 
it will be equally evident that, in order to complete and perfect 
it as truth, the principle which serves as the staple to the chain 
must itself be established and vindicated. This, however, is the 
business of philosophy ; the object of which is to investigate 
and determine first principles, and to bring them into the unity 
of the rational mind and of truth one and universal: principles 
are the postulates of science and the problems of philosophy. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 9 

persensiioiis. But in referring to truths, which 
transcend our sensible experience, do I there- 
fore seduce the student to wander, 

extra flammantia mcp.nia mnndi, 

after an ignis fatuus of vain metaphysical 
speculation? On the contrary, I refer him to 
facts of his own consciousness, whereon to 
ground his assurance of the truth and reality 
of the principles, which the insight of nature 
requires. We demand, and the rational mind 
cannot be satisfied with less, that the facts, 
phaenomena, and changes, which form the 
sphere of our sensible experience, and, collec- 
tively, are called Nature, shall be rendered 
intelligible to, and rationally accounted for by, 
our mind. This cannot be said to have been 
accomplished, whilst they are for us phaeno- 
mena only, mere appearances, or impressions 
on the senses ; nay ! they cannot be said to 
have for us even the dignity of facts, until 
they have been named, collected, sorted, 
arranged and classified, or have received some 
impress of intellectual unity.* But we recjuire 
more than this. The instincts of reason I lead 



• A particular, that is, any specific impression on the senses, 
l)ecomes a fact for the mind when it has heen named, and 
thereby included in a yenus, or designated as a g-eneric con- 
ception. To think is to g-eneralize, and language is the 
instrument of the process. Hence all words are, in truth, 
general terms. 

t The phrase " instincts of reason" is intended to imply 
that men may be actuated hy ideas, truths or principles of 



10 THE IMPORT OI IDEAS 

US to investigate what the realities are of which 
the phsenomena are the outward signs, and we 
ask : What the permanent is amid the per- 
plexing variety of change? How, and by what 
efficiency, the operations offered to our in- 
quiries are wrought ! What enables us to anti- 
cipate as certain the observed recurrence of 
events? And why, or for what purpose, the 
complexus of physical actions and reactions is 
perpetually renewed before us in all the mar- 
vellous variety, order, and beauty of nature ? 
In short, we must soon arrive at the conclusion 
that, in order to any rational insight of the 
facts of sensible experience, we are to view 
them, and seek their intelligibility * in their 
Laws and Causes. And this leads me at once 
to the consideration of the nature of those Laws, 
which have been appointed by the Creator, 
and which it is the aim and humble hope of 

reason, of which they have not conscious possession or insight, 
and that they may be possessed by such, and their thoug-hts 
and acts governed by these powers of truth, though they may 
not possess them, nor have the capability of legitimating the 
possession by conscious insight of their truth and reality. 

And the Reader is requested to observe, that the weight of 
the argument here proposed depends mainly upon a distinction, 
throughout implied in this discourse, and adopted by our elder 
writers, though, alas ! neglected by those of the present day in 
England, namely, the essential distinction between Reason and 
the Understanding ; this, however, has been so fully and ably 
established by Coleridge, that I have only to recommend to at- 
tentive perusal his Aids to Reflection, 4th Edit. p. 157 ; — on the 
difference in kind of Reason and the Understanding. 

* See Appendix A. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 1 1 

his rational creatures to discover, in firm reli- 
ance on his aid, (Xu^Trparrftv TT/DO^" ^topSw<Tiv aKpi(5i] 
Tov iv rifxiv Xoyou, Kai ivioaiv avrov wpoq ra 6vT(vg 
ovra, Ota tov ttjc aXij^Hag tptoTOij. 

It is to our incomparable countryman Bacon 
that, by the unanimous suffrage of natural phi- 
losophers, the merit is conceded of having 
turned men's minds from the mere logical leger- 
demain, which, during the period of the School- 
philosophy, usurped the name of natural 
science, to observation and experiment, and of 
having established the principle of Induction 
as the legitimate process by which we are to 
arrive at insight of the laws of Nature. Shall 
we, however, adopt the now generally received 
opinion, that the inductive process which Lord 
Bacon recommends, consists entirely of " ge- 
neralizations, commencing with the most cir- 
cumstantially stated particulars, and carried 
up to universal laws and axioms, which com- 
prehend in their statements every subordinate 
degree of generality ;"t and thus, that a law is 
only a generalization from the facts and pliaeno- 
mena of sensii)le experience, a mere result of, 
and belonging to, the human understanding? 
Assuredly, Lord Bacon's philosophy had a 
nobler aim, and requires, in order to a science 



• Simplicii Comin. in ILpicteti li^iicliiridiou Schweij^liUiiser, 
Tom. i. p. 526. 

t See Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philo- 
sophy, by I. F. \V. Hcrschel, London, 1830. Chap. iii. p. 104 ; 
(>mpare\Vheweir»IIi8tor)'oftheInductiveScit»nces,V()l,i.p.(i. 



12 TttE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

of nature, that man should also interpret the 
facts offered to his senses. If we ask how he 
attains to this power of Interpretation and of 
insight, the answer is, by the lux intellectus^ 
the lumen siccuni^ the pure and impersonal 
reason, freed from all the various idols, enume- 
rated by our great legislator of science, the 
idola tribus, specus.fori^ theatri, — that is, freed 
from the limits, the passions, the prejudices, 
the peculiar habits of the human understand- 
ing, natural or acquired ; but, above all, from 
the idola intellectus, from the arrogance which 
leads man to take the forms and mechanism 
of his own mere reflective faculty as the 
measure of nature and' Deity. For, says 
Bacon : " Non leve quiddam interest inter 
humance mentis idola et divines mentis Ideas, 
hoc est, inter placita qucedam inania, et veras 
signaturas atque impressiones factas in creaturis, 
prout inveiiiuntur.''* And thus, if in order 
to the interpretation of nature, he requires that 
man should know and apprehend by the light 
of reason the import of sensuous facts as the 
signatures and impressions of divine Ideas, we 
may safely affirm that the Induction, which 
Lord Bacon proposed, though forming the steps 
to the needful vantage ground for the '* inqui- 

* Nov. Org* Aph. 23. Compare Essay IX. of Coleridg-e's 
Friend, 3rd Edit, in which the arg-iiment is more fully stated 
and carried out. And the reader is earnestly invited to peruse 
the whole treatise on Methodology in that work, of which Essay 
IX. forms a part. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. T.*^ 

sitio fonnarmii, quce sunt ralione certa et sua lege 
ceternce et immobiles,'^'^ had in truth, for its final 
object, the discovery of those Ideas, which as 
laws of nature, are the impress of the Creator's 
power and wisdom, and as such, are neces- 
sarily somewhat other and more than the 
mental substantiation of facts under whatever 
degree of generality. 

Again, does the history of the grand disco- 
veries of science offer any sufficient evidence 
that they w^ere only the result of a laborious 
collection of facts and observations of par- 
ticulars. If indeed that great master-piece of 
the generalizing faculty, the Ptolemaic System 
of Astronomy, still retained its authority, it 
might have been held up as a triumphant 
proof of the success of the method : but, alas ! 
"" its cycles and epicycles, orb within orb," 
have vanished like a summer morning's mist 
before the piercing glance of him, who, pene- 
trating deeper than appearances, solem di- 
cerefdlsum aiisus esty — have vanished before a 
reason, which can correct experience, and has 
authority to annul the reports of the senses, 
and the (lictd of the faculty judging according 
to sense. i " What, for instance, could be ap- 



♦ Nov. Org. lib. ii. Aph. 9. 

f " Wc arrive at conclusions which outrun oxj)LMiciu;o, and 
(Inscribe beforehand what will happen under new combinations, 
or even correct imperfect experiments, and load us to a know- 
ledge of facts contrary to received analogieh drawn from an 
experience wrongly interpreted, or overhastily generalized.' 
—Ilrrschrl, ib. p. 'J9. 



14 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

parently more unprofitable than the dry spe- 
culations of the ancient geometers on the pro- 
perties of the conic sections, or than the 
dreams of Kepler, (as they would naturally 
appear to his contemporaries) about the nume- 
rical harmonies of the imiverse ? Yet, (says 
Sir John Herschel, from whom I quote,*) these 
are the steps by which we have risen to a 
knowledge of the elliptic motions of the 
planets, and the law of gravitation, with all its 
splendid theoretical consequences and its in- 
estimable practical results. "t The same high 
authority tells us\ that '* the law of definite 
proportions (in Chemistry), after the laws of 
mechanics, perhaps the most important which 
the study of nature has disclosed, was an- 
nounced at once by Mr. Dalton in its most 
general terms, without passing through sub- 
ordinate stages of painful inductive ascent."§ 
And a dispassionate inquiry into the origin 
of the discoveries of science will convince 
us that, so far from their being in general 



* Herschel, ib. p. 11. 

f Condorcet, quoted by Conte, says : '* Le matelot, quune 
exacte observation de la longitude preserve du naufragCy doit 
la vie d une theorie con^^ue, deux mille ans auparavant,par des 
hommes de genie, qui avaient en vue de simples speculations 
geometriques." — Cours de Philosopliie positive, par M. A. 
Conte, Tome i. p. 65. 

X Herschel, ib. p. 305. 

§ " A remarkable instance of such a relation" (says Sir John 
Herschel, speaking- of the relations amon^- the data of physics, 
which show them to be quantities not arbiti^arily assumed, but 
depending' on laws and causes, which they may be the means 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 15 

the offspring of a generalization from parti- 
culars, they oftener originate in observations 
apparently trivial and accidental, in occur- 
rences sudden and unexpected, frequently 
in the pursuit of fanciful analogies, or in the 
trial and rejection of arbitrary hypotheses, 
and are the result of a mind excited to react 
upon its experience, unsatisfied with the 
hitherto adopted connexion of facts and their 
want of unity, and its inventive and origi- 
native powers, thereby roused to enlarge its 
apprehension beyond the perspective which 
its own mechanism implies : and hence the 
discovery of any great law of nature has 
uniformly the character of felicity, and of a 
revelation, as by a flash of divine light, of the 
legislative wisdom of the Creator. 

This view will acquire additional evidence 
by further meditation on the nature of Law. 
The human mind recognizes a law, wherever 
it attributes unity to a manifold of facts and 
pha^nomena, contemplates the connexion of 



of at length disclosing) '* a remarkable instance of such a re- 
lation is the curious law, which Bode obsened to obtain in the 
progression of the magnitudes of the several planetary orbits. 
This law was interrupted between Mars and Jupiter, so as to 
induce him to consider a planet as wanting in that interval ; — 
a deficiency, long afterwards strangely supplied by the disco- 
very of four new planets in that very interval, all of whose 
orbits conform in dimensions to the law in (question, within 
such moderate limits of error as may be due to causes indepen- 
'l<>nt of those on which the law itself ultimately rests." — Her- 
kcl, ib. p. 308. 



16 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

each and all in relation to the same as neces- 
sary, regular, and invariable, and is thereby 
rendered capable of anticipating and pre- 
dicting a constant order of succession or of 
simultaneous co-operation in their recurrence. 
A glorious instance already adduced, of the 
establishment of a law, answering to this de- 
finition, we owe to our immortal countryman 
Newton. Not only has it been shown that the 
movements of the planetary bodies, of which our 
system consists, are ordered by the law of gra- 
vitation, even that the inequalities of the pla- 
netary movements may be explained and pre- 
determined by the same ; but that the law of 
gravitation enables the astronomer to demon- 
strate with predictive insight, the stability and 
permanence of the system under all the accu- 
mulating influence of its perturbations.* 

It is in attaining to the knowledge derived 
from the possession of such laws, that man 
becomes, as Lord Bacon expresses it, the 
'* Interpreter of nature." But do we not derive 
this gift of power and prophecy from some- 
what far higher than from any mere exercise 
of the human understanding or faculty judging 
according to sense? A law not only implies 
what is, and must be, the result of universal 
experience according to the essential consti- 
tution of human mind, but that more excellent 
knowledge of an operance, which would be 

* Compare Herschel, ib. p. 272. 



t:ONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 17 

real and effective whether man contemplate its 
effects in the works of nature or not, and which 
is constitutive in nature.* Without the ad- 
mission of this incontrovertible truth, all sense 
of an outward, necessary, and efficient con- 
nexion would be lost. Instead of a rational 
and unshaken faith in an invariable order of 
nature, we could only claim for a patch-work 
of experience that faintest mode of combina- 
tion arising from a habit of association in our 
own mind ; and a mere belief in probabilities 
would usurp the place and name of law, with 



* " Every law is a provision for cases which may occur, and 
has relation to an infinite number of cases that never have oc- 
curred and never will. Now it is this provision, a priori, for 
conting^encies, this contemplation of possible occurrences, and 
predisposal of what shall happen, that impresses us with the 
notion of a law and a cause. Among all the possible combi- 
nations of the fifty or sixty elements which chemistry shows 
to exist on the earth, it is likely, nay, almost certain, that 
some have never been formed ; that some elements, in some 
proportions, and under some circumstances, have never yet been 
placed in relation with one another. Yet no chemist can 
doubt that it is already fixed what they will do when the case 
does occur. They will obey certain laws, of which we know 
nothing at present, but which must he already fixed, or they 
could not be laws. It is not by habit, or by trial and failure, 
that they will learn what to do. When the contingency 
occurs, there will be no hesitation, no consultation ; — their 
course will at once be decided, and will always be the same if 
it occur ever so often in succession, or in ever so many places 
at one and the same instant. This is the perfection of a law, 
that it includes all possible contingencies, and ensures im- 
plicit obedience,— and of this kind are the laws of nature." — 
Herschel, ibid. p. 3^. 

C 



18 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

doubt or utter disbelief of all that is beyond 
or above the senses. 

And in the world do we not see everywhere 
evidences of a unity, which the component 
parts are so far from explaining, that they 
necessarily presuppose the unity as the cause 
and condition of their existing at all ? Every 
whole of parts, be it the minutest crystal, a 
plant, an animal, the globe which sustains us, 
the solar system of which it is a part, or the 
universe itself, in the infinitude of which that 
system is less than a mote, every whole of 
parts demands for its intelligibility a cause or 
principle of each union, a power and unity, 
antecedent in the order of efficiency, and re- 
maining present, as the sustaining and conser- 
vative energy ; it implies a legislative act, pre- 
determining the result, compelling implicit 
obedience, and excluding all contingency ; — 
an act combining the foresight of wisdom and 
the power of irresistible will as immutable pur- 
pose and persistent function ; and that (saith 
the judicious Hooker) " which doth assign unto 
each thing the kind, that which doth moderate 
the force and power, that which doth appoint 
the form and measure of working, the same 
we term a law."* Reflect on the exquisite 
harmony of all surrounding things and the co- 
herence of all to the Kotr/i/oc, to the order and 

* Ecclesiastical Politj'^, B. I. c. ij. See Coleridge's Note on 
Hooker, Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. '29. Compare Aids to 
Reflection, 4th Edit. p. 44. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 19 

beauty of the world ! How else could a whole, 
a system of manifold agencies, result in se- 
quence invariable, in connexion necessary, in 
order permanent, in co-operation harmonious, 
in government immutable, unless by a will, 
manifested in acts causative and intelligential, 
predetermining the final purpose, and pro- 
viding the means to the ultimate aim, already 
contemplated in the antecedent unity of the 
legislative act ? 

And, if such be the nature of the laws that 
govern the universe, can it be doubted that 
man may raise his apprehension to the creative 
thought and energy, which produces and sus- 
tains, and that he is permitted to contemplate 
the wisdom and power which framed the w orlds, 
in those energic acts, ideas or laws, which con- 
stitute the divine operance ? Will it be denied 
that the ultimate aim of man's knowledge can 
be no other than the first principles, call them 
truths or powers, which by Bacon and Plato 
were called Ideas of the divine mind? 

But shall we say that man, by any faculties 
that he dare call his own, can comprehend, 
or apprehend, the infinite power and wisdom 
of Deity ? I shrink from the temerity and rash- 
ness of such an assertion. My position is this : 
— Man finds, in examining the facts of his 
consciousness, and as the essential character of 
his rationality, the capability of aj)prehend- 
ing truths universal, necessary, absolute; the 
grounds of which bcintj: underived from, must 



20 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

be antecedent, and presupposed in order, to ex- 
perience : — man finds in himself the capability 
of inferring the reality of that which transcends 
his sensuous experience, and of contemplating 
causality, efficiency, permanent being, law, 
order, finality, unity : — man finds in himself 
the capability of apprehending, in a world of 
relations, the supra-relative ; in a world of de- 
pendencies, the unconditional ; in a world of 
flux and change, the immutable ; in a w^orld of 
imperfections, the perfect: — man recognizes in 
himself, as the privilege and need of a rational 
mind, the capability of enlarging his thoughts 
to the universe, infinite as the omnipresence of 
God, " upholding all things by the word of 
his power ;" the capability of raising his mind 
to the Supreme, as the Absolute Will, causa- 
tive of all reality in the eternal plenitude of 
being. And it is in meditating on the condi- 
tions and cause of this capability that man be- 
comes conscious of an operance in and on his 
own mind, of the downshine of a light from 
above, which is the power of Living Truth, 
and which, in irradiating and actuating the 
human mind, becomes for it Reason;* — yea! 

* The Reader will bear in mind that the object of the Author 
is limited to a description of the relations of human science to 
eternal truth ; but that his meaning* fully and adequately ex- 
pressed, is no less than the sublime doctrine revealed by St. 
John, that the reason is the light and spiritual presence of the 
Logos, TO (pug TO a?^yj9ivoVf o ^cori^ei Travra oivQpcoTTOv ipx^f^^vov 
tig rov HocTjuov, John, chap. i. v. 9. 



rONSECTfc:!) WITH VriAL DYNAMHS. 2\ 

which is the revelation of those divine acts, 
at once causative and intelligential, which he 
recognizes as first principles, ultimate truths, 
as ideas for the human mind, and constitutive 
laws in nature. It is by virtue of this Reason, 
that we hear the voice and legislative words of 
the Creator, sounding through the universe ; 
and it is in the sabbath stillness of our intel- 
lectual being, when the busy hum of the world 
is hushed, that the strains of this divine music 
penetrate the soul attuned by meditation to 
move responsive to its harmony ! 

If, then, a science of nature exist at all, I do 
not hesitate to avow my conviction that it must 
be under the informing light of Ideas. And 
it may be safely asserted from the premisses, 
that the method of the science must be dyna- 
mic ; that is, by contemplating nature as a 
scheme of causes and laws with the connec- 
tions, and in the unity, of reason. 

Difficult, no doubt, will it be for the stu- 
dent, who desires to enter on this attractive 
field of thought, to discipline his mind thereto ; 
but aid, encouragement, and example will not 
be found wanting, if he seriously incline his 
attention to the proofs of the evident dynamic 
tendency of physical science, especially under 
the auspices of its recent and present cultiva- 
tors. Witness the advancement and revolu- 
tion of the science of Astronomy after the 
promulgation of the great ideas of Kepler, 



22 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

and the perfecting of these by the sublime 
geometry of Newton. Trace the progress of 
Chemistry : to bhnd empiricism succeeded ex- 
periment, guided by scientific aims, till at 
length, in Dalton's announcement of the law 
of definite proportions, Chemistry has been 
raised into the conditions of a science, and its 
combinations have been shown to be regulated 
by laws of quantity,* which arm the inquirer 
with foresight and anticipative certainty. With- 
in a short period, however, a new light has 
been thrown upon this interesting department 
of knowledge ; and our illustrious countryman 
Faraday, following the path of his great prede- 
cessor Davy, even now is lifting the veil, which, 
under the vague and empirical phrase, *' elec- 
tive affinity," has hitherto hidden the nature 
and operation of chemical forces, and has 
already shown that *' bodies are held together 

* *' Optime autem cedit inquisitio naturalis, quando physi- 
cum terminatur in mathematico." Nov. Org. Lib. ii. Aph. 8. 

" And (says Herschel, ibid. p. 123.) it is a character of all 
the higher laws of nature to assume the form of precise quan- 
titative statement." Nor shall we wonder that man has acquired 
insight into nature and her laws, in proportion as he has been 
enabled to reduce them to distinct quantitative statement, and 
has brought them within the mental constructions of mathe- 
matical science, if, as in the instance before us, " the observed 
relations among the data of physics show them to be quantities 
not arbitrarily assumed, but depending on laws and causes, which 
they may be the means of disclosing." Need we remind the 
reader of the speculations of the Pythagorean School, or of the 
sublime saying, Niimero, pondcrc^ et mensura (jenerantur cccli 
et terra? 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 23 

by a definite power, which, when it ceases to 
discharge that office, may be thrown into the 
condition of an electric current, "t And if he 
has succeeded in thus establishing the identity 
of electrical and cliemical action, how greatly 
augmented, and how rapidly extending, is our 
knowledge of this power, and with it of all those 
agents, which, refusing to be evoked by any 
other name than that which reserves to them 
their dynamic character, are called even by the 
empirical inquirer " imponderable.'' The age 
of man might almost suffice to recall to our re- 
collection the time when electricity was little 
better than a scientific plaything ; but the dis- 
coveries of Oerstedt, of Faraday, and of their 
noble compeers, whilst they have shown us 
that in electricity. Voltaic action, magnetism 
and chemical attraction, the same power is at 
work under different conditions of operance, 
have only left us in doubt how few of the 
phaBnomena and changes of nature may be 
left by future investigation unexplained by its 
agency. Meanwhile we see that as science 
advances it more and more penetrates beyond 
the mere objects of sense, and, in order to 
obtain the intelligibility of their causes, directs 
its inquiries to the powers and forces, of which 
the sensuous phaenomcna are only the signs, 
and to the laws, under which the powers are 
manifested in their results. 

t Faraday's Rebearchcs, Fliil. Trans. Art. 855. 



24 THi: IMPORT OF IDEAS 

Now if this position admit of verification in 
the sciences strictly physical, it will obtain 
evidence more full and striking, — though from 
the nature of the subject the scientific idea 
must longer await its perfected form, — in those 
which have for their object the problem of life 
and organization. It was the peculiar and 
eminent merit of John Hunter, that he had 
raised his mind to the apprehension of life as 
a law, in aid of a science of vital dynamics, 
and as the means of giving scientific unity to 
the facts of living nature. In what other 
sense can we understand either his assertion 
that " life is a principle independent of orga- 
nization," or the purport of the magnificent 
commentary on his system, the Hunterian 
Museum?* The incalculable advantage of 
philosophizing in this spirit is plain, if we 
consider that Hunter at once got rid of all 
hypotheses, fictions, and arbitrary assump- 
tions. By contemplating life, as Newton had 
taught the mechanic philosophers to contem- 
plate gravitation, not as a thing, nor as a spi- 
rit, neither as a subtle fluid, nor as an intel- 
ligent soul, but as a law, he laid the foun- 
dation of scientific physiology; and in that 
very conception of a law taught us that life 
is a power anterior in the order of thought to 
the organization, which it animates, sustains 
and repairs, — a power originative and construc- 

* Compare Coleridge's Friend, vol. iii. p. 173. 



rONNKCTED WITH VI lAL DYNAMICS. 'Ih 

live of the organization, in which it continues 
to manifest itself in all the forms and functions 
of animated being. This great Idea never 
ceased to work in him as his genius and 
governing spirit ; and if in his printed works 
the one directing thought seems occasionally 
to elude his grasp, yet in the astonishing pre- 
parations for his Museum we find him con- 
structing it for scientific apprehension out 
of the *' unspoken alphabet of nature," and 
exhibiting the legislative idea in the '' mode 
and measure of its working," by bringing to- 
gether the significant forms and types of life 
and organic existence. A better comment on 
the aim of Hunter we cannot offer than in the 
words of the celebrated Cuvier : " Celui, qui 
posscderait rationnellemeyit les lois de Vcconomie 
organique pourrait refaire tout Vanimcd.''* For 
what else does he here assert, than that in the 
light of a law, according to which the animated 
being was originally constructed, we obtain 
insight into the forms and relations of organic 

• Cuvier Revolutions du Globe, p. 99. It was the percep- 
tion of a Law that enabled Cuvier to say, that it is " le pri?icipe 
de la correlation des formes dans les ctres organises, au moyen 
duquel chague sorte d'etre pourrait, a la riyueur, vtre re- 
connue par chuque frafjment de chacune de ses parties.'' 

*' Tout itre org anise forme un ensemble, un systeme unique 
ct clos, dont les parties se correspondent mutuellement, et 
concourent a la meme action definitive par une reaction red- 
proque. Aucune de ses parties ne peut chamjer sans que les 
autres changent aussi ; et par consequent chacune d'elleSy 
prise separcment, indiqur et dntnie toutcs les «M/re5."— Cuvier, 
ibid. p. 95. 



26 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

structure, and of their necessary interdepen- 

dency?t 

For proofs of the pregnancy of the idea, 
which animated Hunter's labors, turn to the 
magnificent assemblage of facts contained in 
the Museum, which by the munificence of 
Parliament is now deposited within these walls, 
and which by the liberality of this College, 
mindful of its sacred trust, aided by the taste 
and judgment of the architect, Mr. Barry, has 
been provided with an abode worthy of the 
means employed and of the object in view. In 
speaking of the Museum you would, however, 
justly deem it an omission did I not notice the 
excellent preservation and admirable order of 
its contents, which we owe to the zeal and 
ability of the Conservators : and it would be un- 



t A no less instructive illustration might be offered in the 
idea, in the light of which the law of the metamorphosis of 
plants rose up before the mind of the poet Goethe ; nor needed 
he to have felt any irritation when Schiller, to whom he was 
expounding it, " shook his head and said, That is not experience, 
that is an idea." See the anecdote in Whewell's Hist, of the 
Inductive Sciences, vol. iii. p. 435 ; for the idea is the mental 
possession of the law under which the results are realized which 
are the object of experience. And if the germ which Goethe 
planted, became in the hands of Decandolle and others one of 
the most important elements of physiological botany, in giving 
intelligibility to growth and development, which are the essen- 
tial character of vegetable life, it has mainly contributed to 
raise Botany into the rank of a dynamic science, and to give 
scientific connection to the accumulative labours of Linnspus, of 
Jussieu, and others, to whom we are indebted for the indispen- 
sable work of classification and generalization. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 2/ 

grateful were I not to express the deep sense, 
which in common with the profession T must 
ever feel, of the singular merits of Mr. Clift, to 
whose affectionate devotion of a life under many 
former privations we are indebted for its jealous 
guardianship, and in whom as the genius loci 
each preparatioQ lives, and the soul of all is 
as it were impersonated in a living individuality, 
the substantiated echo of Hunter's self. It is 
impossible in taking a cursory view of this store- 
house of physiological wealth to repress our 
admiration of the founder himself, who at the 
sacrifice of fortune and of present enjoyment to 
the cause of science, labored with undaunted 
perseverance amid the sneers of his contempo- 
raries* in the execution of this great work ; it 
is impossible in a more leisurely survey of its 
treasures not to appreciate the judgment he 
displayed in culling that which is choicest in 
illustrative fact ; it is impossible in examining 
his preparatory labors for the description and 
explanation of the collection, now in the course 
of publication with the catalogue, to withhold 
our unqualified praise of the genius, which thus 
brought together this epitome of animated na- 
ture in the unity of a scientific idea ! 

It is in this Museum that we find the pledge 

* It is reported that a surgeon of no inconsiderable repute 
at the time ventured to say— that Mr. Hunter's preparations 
were just as vahiable as so many pif::'s petty toes. And I can 
state on good authority that it was thought even discreditable to 
attend Mr. Hunter's lecturct. 



28 THK IMPORT OF IDEAS 

and proof of John Hunter's pre-eminent and 
original merit, that of having first presented the 
facts of comparative anatomy in and as a con- 
nected scheme of graduated development, the 
connexion supplied and the aim anticipated in 
the antecedent unity of the causative law of 
life. He has thus furnished the grounds of a 
new science, the science of Comparative or 
Universal Physiology, and with it the well 
founded and not unconfirmed hope of making 
every part of the organized creation give intel- 
ligibility to every other part, and all to the 
crown and consummation of all, the human 
frame. 

It would be worse than idle to say that his 
great predecessors from Aristotle and Galen 
down to Haller, Daubenton, and Pallas, and 
amongst whom we proudly point to our im- 
mortal Harvey, had not collected many and 
most valuable materials, or had not been guided 
by the instincts of science in the direction of 
its true aim ; but it would require other bold- 
ness than that of truth to aver that hitherto 
any induction of law had given connexion 
and scientific unity to the facts of comparative 
anatomy and physiology. It would be alike 
base and purposeless to deny the well earned 
merits of his contemporaries and successors ; 
and without any invidious attempt to detract 
from the fair fame of the illustrious Cuvier, as 
the great lexicographer of comparative ana- 
tomy, or to lessen the high character of his 



CONNECTRD WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 29 

distinguished fellow laborers, French, Italian 
and German, especially the last in their rare 
combination of the minutest accuracy with the 
boldest speculation, — and certainly without 
any desire to obscure the reputation of our 
own countrymen, — we may justly claim for 
Hunter the praise of originality and of priority 
in the scientific development of comparative 
physiology ; even though it may be true, that 
by the aid of subsequent inquirers we see more 
clearly than he himself did the final aim im- 
plied iij his researches, and approach nearer 
to the goal toward which he led the way. 
That ho^vever he had also more largely con- 
tributed to the wealth of facts, that form the 
capital of the science, than has been hitherto 
admitted, — nay that he had anticipated much 
of recent discovery, — can scarcely now be 
doubted, though it will be unnecessary for me 
to enter into details, unsuited to the present 
occasion, as this College has best provided for 
establishing his claims by the foundation of 
the Hunterian chair, which, filled by its present 
and first professor, Richard Owen,* the able 
vindicator of Hunter's fame, is calculated to 
form a glorious epoch in the annals of science, 
reflecting honor alike on this College and on 

• Palmer's edition of Hunter's works, vol- vi. Observations 
on certain parts of the animal economy, with preface and notes 
by Richard Owen. An invaluable commentary on Hunter, in 
connection with the descriptive catalogue of the physioloj^icftl 
series of coniparatixr anatomy in the Hiintciian Museum. 



30 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

the country. Sufficient for my present purpose, 
if I am permitted to sketch briefly the scope, 
tendency and main result of Hunter's prin- 
ciples. 

We gather from Hunter's researches, that 
even in *' animal substances devoid of apparent 
organization," such as a germ, a seed or an 
egg, there is what Hunter calls a *' simple 
principle of life ;" and we learn from these 
instances that, though the force of vitality be 
latent, in all life existence must begin from 
itself, — (I do not say caused by itself,) — and 
depends upon an appetence to be, or to 
fill a pre-determined sphere ; in other words, 
living existence implies a subject or power 
which, actuated and directed by the law or 
idea, becomes a causative agency formative 
and productive, and this under the condition 
of being excited to act, and at the same time 
of resisting the excitant, as long as it remains 
an alien power, either by repelling or appro- 
priating the same. The living germ is excited 
by the surrounding heat, light, air and 
moisture, under circumstances in which these 
alien agents form an appropriate element ; 
and whilst therein the materials are acquired 
from without by assimilation, the form is 
evolved by a shaping energy from within, and 
the living subject, like a blind artist working- 
after an invisible pattern, constructs the organ- 
ization in which it dwells. 

This is the first character of all life, Pro- 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 31 

ductivity, and this so eminently that we cannot, 
except by abstraction, conceive of hfe other- 
wise than as manifested inseparably in a pro- 
duct. But the living thing, though beginning 
from itself, would exist but imperfectly did it 
not exist likewise for itself; but this it cannot 
do except for another, and in and by an out- 
ward world. This relation to an outward world 
is indeed attained in growth ; but as we see 
throughout the vegetable kingdom, of which 
growth is the essential character, the result is 
imperfect : the whole living energy is produc- 
tivity, and exhausts itself in outward products; 
but the plant has no inward reflex on itself, 
and remains to and for itself an alien and unin- 
telligible thing. In order to that potentiation 
of living existence, which we name animated, 
or to any grade of being in that scale, which 
culminates in, and is throughout rendered in- 
telligible by, mind and will, the living subject 
must at least so far know as to find or feel its 
own state. Sensibility is the predominant, say 
rather the essential, characteristic of animated 
being; sensation is indeed an imperfect reflex, 
but yet is the nascent consciousness of a self, 
though again of a self, which as life we dare 
not call other or more than the craving, whicli 
arises from want and the appetence of being. 
But in whatever degree this want is disclosed, 
and the craving awakened, that which the self 
or subject does not, and cannot, find in itself, 
it is impelled to lio out of itself to seek and to 



32 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

procure; and to this going forth the living sub- 
ject is roused by the multiform excitants of 
the outward world, attracted by that which 
it desires, repelled by the alien, and in the 
seizure or resistance compelled to adapt its own 
state to its manifold exigences inward or out- 
ward. Here then rise upon us the powers and 
functions of IrritalTility and muscular action, 
of free-motion, of adaptive agencies, and of 
instinctive contrivance, as the necessary cor- 
respondents of Sensibility by which, under the 
influence of pleasure and of pain, occasioned 
by needs, allurements and resistances, which 
attract the subject from, or repell it to, its 
centre, the living being feels its own state, and 
though imperfectly finds a self. 

Growth, motion and feeling, — such are the 
universal characters, under which animated 
being is alone conceivable. And it is in 
contemplating these functions as forces of one 
subject or power that we learn the aim and 
purpose of the actuating idea, in the develop- 
ment of an organism, as intending a living 
body, that is, a sphere of act and existence, 
as the indispensable medium and condition 
of the manifestation and working of that which 
in and of itself is essentially supersensuous 
— a living subject or power. But if growth, 
motion and feeling, constitute the universal 
characters of animated beings, and must there- 
fore be predicated of the lowest, we shall 
find, in bringing before our minds the different 



CONNECTED WITH VHAL DYNAMICS. 33 

orders of creatures and ranks of animals, that 
these are differenced by a relative subordina- 
tion of these forces. If in the germ the living 
subject exist in and from itself; if in a higher 
form of development, first of growth, and then 
of growth with instinctive motion, it exist for 
others ; and if in the form of sensibility it exist 
for itself; — by comparing' 1 say, the various 
groups of the animal kingdom, we shall find 
that they may be ranged in an ascending 
scale, of which the degrees are marked by a 
relative balance and proportion of the vital 
forces, and in which the ascent is determined 
by the evolution of life into Sensibility, and by 
the superordinalion of sensibility as the highest 
force and most essential form of living exist- 
ence. 

In the lowest forms of life, m hich seem al- 
most exhaustless in the Protozoa, nature may 
be said to measure space, and in realizing its 
dimensions to take possession of and fill it 
with an experimental variety of living shapes. 
And thus are presented to us forms, which 
remind us, first of lifeless nature, the disc, the 
star, the globe, the cylinder, animated as it 
were into living being; and which next rise 
into shapes, imitative of the lowest form of 
vitality in vegetation, the vase, the bell, and 
the various flowerlike forms of the inhabitants 
of the corals, and their housings.* 



Here the shaping energy is predominantly active, and it 
orthy of notice, as significant of its operation through the 
D 



34 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

But while life is thus busy in multiplying 
shapes, its inward activity is at work in se- 
curing the conditions of organic function and 
of the self renewal of existence, by building up 
the organs instrumental to the reproduction of 
the animal and to its relations with the out- 
ward world. And if in the lower orders of the 
Invertebrated Series this inward activity is sub- 
ordinated to that which manifests itself in out- 
ward shape, it is in the higher order of the 
same, namely in the insects and molluscous 
animals, that the vital striving in both direc- 



whole ascent of formation, that as Cams has sagaciously ob- 
served, '^ the most simple and primary form of all organization 
is the spherical, and that whilst the flattening of the sphere 
into shapes, bounded by plane surfaces, denotes elanguescence 
of an idio-centric or vital action, as in crystals, the expansion of 
the sphere, its elongation into the ellipse, its protrusions, or the 
multiplication of its centre or periphery, express an increase of 
vital energy and exhibit the formation of living bodies," See 
Grundzuge der ve-fgleichenden Anatomie und Physiologie, p. 
12. Compare his work Von den Urtheilendes Knochengeriists. 
In this evolution of the animated globe or sphere, we must not 
however forget, that in the constructive act the straight line, as 
the radius, is equally a coefficient with the curvilineal, and claims 
a place in the order and perfection of nature, as the form of 
motion radiant or extroitive and as the symbol of act and func- 
tion. This primary form of evolution, of which the spherical is 
the ground, we notice in the germ and e^^, the globules of the 
blood, and globular infusoria ; and in the radiated order of 
animals, this as a character of the formative law of life is still 
preserved in the equal development and symmetrical arrange- 
ment about a central axis, as if the shaping energy were still 
bound by, and could not altogether free itself from, the limits 
imposed by the scheme of equal development from a centre. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 35 

lions becomes more apparent, energetic and 
significant. In Iiisecta the life is thrown out- 
ward, not in order to shape, but to perfect the 
relations of the animal to the outward world, 
in organizing it for free motion, for instinctive 
and adaptive actions, for the eminently outward 
existence, which is the main character of the 
whole class : hence in connexion with it the 
multiplicity and variety of locomotive and in- 
strumental organs, so that the animal in many 
instances is a whole workshop of tools ; hence, 
the perfecting especially of the respiratory 
apparatus, and the aeriform structure of the 
whole body ; hence its metamorphoses, or out- 
wardly exhibited embryogeny ; hence its de- 
fect of inward unity and the exhibition of a 
life relatively persisting in sections, as in the 
familiar example of a divided wasp. The 
insect is indeed the representative of irrita- 
bility, of a life excited to outward reaction ; 
and hence in the insects we find Instinct fully 
developed, and therewith one of the great pur- 
poses of animated existence disclosed, as that 
of acquiring a sphere of action by the adaptation 
of means to mediate ends ; a character equally 
applicable to the human understanding in tlie 
absence of ultimate aims under the abeyance 
of the reason.* 

In the Mollusca, on the other hand, the 



* Sco Aids to Reflection; 4th edition, p. 157. On the 
difference in kind of Reason and the rinderstandincr. and on the 
connexion of Instinct with the latter. 



30 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

energy of life is drawn inward, and we are 
presented with what by a bold metaphor we 
may call, the tentative experiments of nature 
in perfecting the internal organs. Witness 
especially the progressive complication and 
advancing perfection of the digestive, respi- 
ratory and circulating organs : but this not so 
much in reference to the animal itself as to 
prepare those organic relations, which in the 
next stage of the ascent are necessary for the 
development of the apparatus of sensibility. 
And if, when we compare the Mollusca with 
the insects, there is an apparent sinking back, 
it is in order as it were to draw inward and 
concentrate the orgauiiic energies for the 
higher and more complete ascent of which 
they are the promise. 

In the Invertebrated Series of animals, we 
trace already a structure fitted in a higher 
stage to become typical of an inward and 
central unity, namely the nervous system and 
brain. But the development and perfecting 
of these is the main character of those animals^ 
which in connexion with it are provided with 
a skeleton, hence called Vertebrated, and in 
which, though attained by grades and suc- 
cessive steps, the process is completed of the 
evolution of life into sensibility ; that is, when 
the power of sensibility becomes central and 
predominant, and is manifested in its appro- 
priate structure of Nervous System and Brain. 
This process, as one of experimenting the 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. o7 

different proportions and harmonies of the 
three powers of life under various relations, 
we trace in the fishes, reptiles and birds, and 
finally in the Mmnmalia, in whom the super- 
ordination of the Sensibility is ultimately ac- 
complished.* 

It is in the light of this scientific Idea, as 
supplying unity and connexion to the facts of 
organic structure exhibited in Hunter's Mu- 
seum, that we contemplate nature as a Physi- 
ogony or genetic process ; and if it be possible 
to convey in one sentence the sort and degree of 
interest, which the final aim of such a history 
of nature is calculated to inspire, I might say, 
that the object is, to exhibit every order of 
living beings, from the " rudimental chaos of 
life" to the Mammalia, as so many embryonic 

* These views formed the basis, and explaiu the purport, of 
the Lectures on comparati\e anatomy, which the Author had 
the honor of delivering:, when Professor of anatomy and sur- 
gery, at the Royal College of Sur<^eons. The publication of 
these Lectures has been rendered unnecessary by various works, 
which oflfer to the student the means of more extensive infor- 
mation on this important branch of knowledge, than they 
claimed to possess ; but he hopes at no distant period to set 
forth more at large the principles here enunciated, and which 
those lectures were intended to vindicate in connection with 
Hunter's labors. In the meanwhile he refers the Reader to the 
Catalogue, descriptive and illustrative of the physiological series 
of comparative anatomy, for illustrations of his views; and he 
especially entreats his attention to the third volume, and its 
admirable preface, in corroboration of their accordance with the 
spirit of Hunter's researches. A lecture containing u brief re- 
capitulation of the above mentioned course will be found at the 
end of the volume. 



38 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

States of an Organism, to which nature from the 
beginning had tended ; to exhibit nature as 
labouring in birth with man, and her living 
products as so many significant types of the 
great process, which she is ever tending to com- 
plete in the evolution of the organic realm.* 
And in recognizing by the light of this idea 
man as the ultimate aim and consummation of 
nature, we shall see in each stage of the ascend- 
ing scale, with evidence increasing directly as 
the ascent, at once the opposition and harmony 

* A similar view is taken by the German philosopher Schel- 
ling, whose speculations produced a revolution in the minds of 
his countrymen, not less remarkable than that effected by his 
predecessor Kant, and which, whatever may be thought other- 
wise of their worth, cannot but be admitted to have had an in- 
vigorating influence on the progress of natural science ; wit- 
ness, as more or less intimately connected with his school, the 
names of Steffens, Ritter,Oerstedt, Oken, Carus, Kieser, Will- 
brand, Link, Marcus, Reil, Walther, Dollinger, Sprengel, &c. 

He says, " Der Anatom begreife das Symbolische aller 
Gestalten, und dass auch in dem Besondern immer eine all- 
gemeine Form, wic in dem Aussern ein innerer Typus ausge- 
driickt ist. Bestdndig sey in ihm die Idee von der Einheit und 
inneren Verwandtschaft aller Organisationen, der Abstam- 
rnung von einem Urbild, dessen Objectives allein verdnder- 
lich, das Subjective aber unver Under lich ist : undjene dar- 
zustellen, halte er fur sein einziges wakres Geschdft.'' The 
philosophical anatomist should strive to apprehend the symbolical 
character of all organic forms, and learn that in every particular 
form a universal form, and in every outward an inward type, is 
revealed. The idea should be constantly present to his mind of 
the unity and inward alliance of all organisms, and of their deri- 
vation from one prototype, objectively only changeable, but 
subjectively, or as a subject, invariable ; and to exhibit this idea 
should be his aim, and is his true vocation. — Sckelling Academ- 
isches Studiuni, p. 300. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 39 

of two great tendencies ; — on the one hand that 
of nature to integrate all into one compre- 
hensive whole, and consequently retaining each 
part; — and on the other hand, the tendency 
to integration in the parts, or that by which 
each more and more secures the privilege of 
being in, from, and for itself, as the anticipated 
type of its final achievement in the Indivi- 
duality of man. 

And in further support of the truth of this 
principle of advancing Integration, I confi- 
dently refer you to the researches of Wolff, 
Meckel and others in embryology. They have 
successfully established the law, already an- 
ticipated by Hunter,* that the progressive 
phases of the embryo correspond to the abid- 
ing forms, which are preserved in the total 
organism of animated nature, as typical of its 
gradative evolution ; and that as the embryo 
of each higher animal passes rapidly through 
the forms of the animals inferior to it, in order 
to attain its maturity and specific rank of 

* " If we were capable of following the progress of increase 
of the number of the parts of the most perfect animal, as they 
first formed in succession, from the very first, to its state of 
full perfection, we should probably be able to compare it with 
some one of the incomplete animals themselves, of every order 
of animals in the creation, being; at no stag^e different from 
some of those inferior orders ; or, in other words, if we were 
to take a series of animals from the more imperfect to the 
perfect, we siiould probably find an imperfect animal corres- 
ponding with some stage of the most perfect." Hunterian 
MSS. See Preface to the Physiological Cataloyuc, vol. i. 
p. iv. 



40 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

being, that of man is transitively the compen- 
dium of all ; not indeed without a difference, — 
since in each instance the changing form of 
the embryo bears the impress of its transi- 
tional and incomplete character, while it ever 
preserves the promise and prophecy of the 
being into which it is to be finally evolved. 
And it did not escape Hunter, as a conse- 
quence of the same law, that Congenital De- 
fects, hitherto comprehended under the vague 
designation of monstrosity, are to be explained 
by the development of the embryo being in- 
terrupted and arrested at some early stage of 
its regular evolution, and that the defective 
form, which is the result, is analogous to the 
form and structure of an inferior class. And 
thus if in the human embryo these defective 
forms constitute a series of transient epochs, 
which are repetitions of the types, that denote 
the grades of the ascending scale of ani- 
mated being, in like manner all the lower 
forms in relation to the highest may be re- 
garded as abortions, by anticipation of nature's 
mature work, the human frame.* 

Again, in meditating farther on the in- 
creasing perfection of being, as measured by 
its adequateness to the principle of Integration 
and Totality in each part, which nature aims 
at in the whole, we acknowledge, in the evi- 
dence offered throughout the ascending scale 
of animated existence the following points if 

* See Appendix B. f See Appendix C. 



CONNECTLID WITH VITAL DYNAiMU s. t\ 

1st. That every organic whole, from the 
polype up to man, indicates a higher and more 
effective principle of unity, and therefore of 
more perfect individuality, in proportion as the 
parts are more numerous, yet at the same time 
more various, each having a several end ; while 
yet the interdependence of each on the other, 
the subordination of the lower to the higher, 
and the intimate union of all shall be perfected 
in an equal proportion : — 

2dly. That, as every organic whole is the 
result of an antecedent principle or power, 
which, considered as power, is exclusive of parts, 
another mark of advancing perfection w ill be 
when the partless and indivisible unity is itself 
represented by some visible and central pro- 
duct, to which all the various parts converge 
as the bond, medium and condition of the 
communion and interdependence of all in their 
constitution to one. Such is the Brain, which 
represents in respect of power that unity which 
the total shape or exterior exhibits in respect 
of sight or sense : — 

And, '3rdly. If the aim of animated being 
be the achievement of sensibility, and of the 
subordination of the inferior powers thereto, 
by which the animal exists from itself, in 
itself, and though imperfectly for itself, in 
order to the full presentation of this ultimate 
end, nature must not only feel, — she must 
know— her own being, that is, Mind must be 
uperadded to life. 



42 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

If then we take these as the characters of 
the advancing perfection of nature towards 
Individuality, as the final purpose of divine 
law, it is plain that we alone find them fully 
realized in that being, whom we dare no longer 
consider merely as a part of nature, over 
which he is destined to *' have dominion," but 
rather as its crown and epitome. In man, we 
find the organic structure completed, and the 
total organization exhibiting the most perfect 
attainment of corporeal existence, as the me- 
dium and condition of the operance and self- 
potentiation of soul, spirit or power : — in man 
alone the organic frame is so constituted that 
no one part is predominantly or disproportion- 
ately developed, and therefore permits, and 
requires beyond that of any other animal the 
adjustment of all the living powers and facul- 
ties to a balance, in the control of which we 
recognize the condition, mark, and privilege of 
his free agency ; in all the animated beings 
below man the body may be said to constitute 
the animal, in him it is the organ and instru- 
ment of mind; in short, the organization of 
man is no longer the mere perfecting, but the 
apotheosis, of the animal structure.* In him 
alone the analoga of rational mind and of will, 
— and more we cannot attribute to the most 
intelligent animals, — cease to be mere analoga ; 



* See Appendix D, on the characteristics of the human 
frame. 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMIC S. 43 

and in each of these twin factors are we to 
look for the consummation of the great aim 
towards which nature tends from the be- 
ginning. In the sjDhere of the intellect, indi- 
viduality appears consummated in Genius; in 
the sphere of the will, Individuality has its 
acme in integrity, — moral worth. It is in man 
finally that individuality becomes Personality ; 
that is, the capability of self-affirmation in the 
image of the invisible Supreme, implying the 
command that he should unite his powers of 
intellect and of act to perfect himself ac- 
cording to that divine pattern and Idea in order 
to his high destiny. 

The physiologist must indeed here reveren- 
tially pause, as having reached the limits of 
his science, yet his researches would want the 
light of their final aim should he pass unno- 
ticed their common end, in which is disclosed 
to us the object of the history of nature as 
preface and portion of the history of man, the 
knowledge of nature as a branch of self- 
knowledge and the outwardly realized history 
of our own consciousness and conscious being. 
It was to this as its goal that John Hunter's 
labors undoubtedly tended, and it is not too 
much to say, that in presenting the facts of 
comparative anatomy, as a connected scheme 
of graduated development in the unity of 
predetermining law, he justly claims our 
homage as the founder of the science of Com- 



44 THE IMPORl OF IDEAS 

parative or Universal Physiology, in which 
every part of the creation derives its intelligi- 
bility from the final purpose revealed in 
earth's noblest creature, —as aspiring heaven- 
ward — Man. 

And if Hunter left the physiological part of 
his great work incomplete, it was only because 
in obedience to the more pressing exigencies 
of the profession to which he belonged, he 
projected a revolution in Pathology, by car- 
rying into the obscure recesses of disease the 
torch of the same philosophy, by which he 
had already successfully shed a light upon the 
hitherto mysterious agencies of vitality. We 
may date from his original views the rise of 
scientific surgery : but invaluable as his re- 
searches w^ere, and most happy as their effects 
have been, in the especial improvement and 
increased light, power, and courage of surgery, 
may we not rather say, that he achieved the 
more important service of bringing the whole 
art of healing into an immediate connexion 
with the sciences, which have nature for their 
object, by exhibiting its requisite foundation 
on an enlightened physiology ? And if the attri- 
bute of inventive genius be his, who unequivo- 
cally establishes a principle, as including, 
anticipating, and explaining all, and even its 
possible and yet unknown results, we venture 
to claim this distinction for Hunter, in extend- 
ing to pathology the same principle which had 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 45 

happily guided his physiological researches, 
by treating disease as a problem of vital dy- 
namics, and by seeking its intelligibility in 
the unity of the law of life.* The limits of 
this address compel me indeed, though reluc- 
tantly, to relinquish as hopeless the attempt to 
elucidate the philosophical tendency of his 
pathological labors : but I do not hesitate to 
affirm that one of the main aids in construct- 
ing a science of pathology will be by adopting 
as its ground the principle throughout implied 
in Hunter's researches ; that is, by recogni- 
zing in life a power as of an agent at once 
contrariant to, and coerced by, the law, which 
actuates and directs it ; and by treating 
disease as a problem, the solution of which is 
to be sought in the great laws of life, as per- 
turbations indeed of the order, which these 
laws maintain, derived from the imperfection 
of the subject, but perturbations to be ex- 
plained by laws, which, like those of the solar 
system, at once permit and correct the de- 
viations. And if after witnessing the vain 
strivings of this contrariant agency, betrayed 
in disorder, deformity, degeneracy and disease, 
the medical philosopher meditates, on the laws 
which produce the order, |)erniancncc, regu- 
larity and beauty of organic life, he will feel as 
if, after the toils, vexations, and annoyances of 
the day, he had withdrawn with the astronomer 



* See Appendix K. 



46 THE IMPORT OF IDEAS 

to his observatory, and in the hushed stilhiess 
of some balmy night, directing his delighted 
gaze to the serene spectacle of the star-lit 
sky, contemplated the mystic planetary dance, 
which reveals more sensibly, though not more 
certainly than animated being, the eternal and 
unchangeable laws impressed on nature by 
nature's Architect and Creator. Thence turn- 
ing back on his own pursuits, he will accord to 
Hunter the high merit of being at least the 
Kepler of his science, which only awaits its 
Newton in order to complete the scientific 
unity, already instinctively anticipated by 
Hunter's genius I 

Finally ; the aim of this address has been 
to exhibit to you John Hunter as a medical 
philosopher, by vindicating the philosophical 
tendency and spirit of his labors ; and its pur- 
port will need no apology to those w^ho love 
and honor the Profession, and are ambitious 
that it should possess that honor and dignity 
in the estimation of society at large, which 
nothing but its scientific character, as a 
branch from the common trunk of universal 
truth, can confer ; that rank which it first ac- 
quired, and which it can only retain by its 
intimate connexion with the liberal arts and 
sciences, the possession and application of 
which constitute and continue the civilization 
of a country. And as such, and because 
they all contain as a necessary element a 



CONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 4l 

knowledge, which is its own reward, and 
needs no higher or accidental benefit as a 
motive for its cultivation, they acquire and 
merit the name of liberal ; and without which, 
we might still have most useful trades with 
ingenious and well informed tradesmen, ope- 
ratives, and artizans, but no professions, and 
no claim from the profession to the name of 
gentlemen. 

The relative wants and afflictions of man 
constitute the necessity of the healing art; 
and its application in detail to the removal or 
alleviation of the mishaps and ailments, that 
*' flesh is heir to," forms its marketable value. 
In every particular calling there is a particular 
kind or quantum of skill and technical know- 
ledge, arising out of the specific wants or 
desires of our fellow creatures, which every 
member of the calling, be it what it may, is 
under a virtual contract to possess. If this be 
the case generally, most especially must it 
be so with the members of the medical and 
surgical profession ; and as far as this sort and 
quantity of professional skill and knowledge 
are concerned, ignorance and incompetence 
are worse than disreputable, — they are dis- 
honest. But for this very reason, the pos- 
session of these alone can confer no honor. It 
never can be a distinction to possess what it 
would be ignominy to want. Consequently in 
whatever calling this is all, where the calling 
neither requires nor admits of more, — however 



48 THC IMPORT OF IDEAS 

great and evident its utility may be, however 
indisputable for mankind its services, — it never 
did, it never can, obtain or deserve the rank 
or character of a liberal profession. 

There was a period even in Christendom, 
when the art of medicine, made up of super- 
stition and the crudest empiricism, left wise 
men in doubt, whether it were better than an 
art of cheating and poisoning. Nevertheless 
it was connected with what at that time passed 
for philosophy, science, and the liberal arts, 
and in consequence of this connexion physi- 
cians enjoyed at all times a high rank and con- 
sideration as members of society. On the other 
hand, there never was a time, or ever could be, 
when Surgery, even in its rudest form, could 
have been otherwise than most useful, nay, ne- 
cessary for mankind ; under all circumstances 
it was and must have been a blessing. But 
it was mere chirurgery, that is, hand-craft, 
handy-M^ork. It was not engrafted on the 
great trunk of universal science, of which all 
particular knowledges are but so many di- 
verging branches, not yet ennobled by being 
permeated as it were by those general truths, 
of which the rules and maxims of medicine 
and surgery are but so many specific appli- 
cations and embodyings. The connexion in 
which the name stood in the privileged Guild 
or Company of Surgeons, explains and in- 
stances the consequence : our unphilosophic, 
unspeculative predecessors carried on the trade 
of Barber-surgeons. 



(ONNECTED WITH VITAL DYNAMICS. 49 

If on the one hand, every profession has a 
deep interest in tiie character of its professors ; 
— for as the artists generally, such will be the 
general estimation of the art ; and a profession 
will soon sink into the predicament of a trade, 
where the majority of its professors derive 
their njotives from, and confine their attain- 
ments to, the demands and interests of their 
own shop, and study only the good opinion of 
their customers : — so, on the other hand, has 
every professional man a deep interest in the 

neral estimation and accredited rank of his 
profession.* But knowledge and skill, exclu- 
sively practical and empirical, did not raise 
our art into, and never can maintain it in, the 



* A liberal profession may be defined as " the application 
of science, by the actual possessors of the same, to the needs 
and commodities of social man ; that is, by a learned class, 
among' whom, as far as the boundaries of existing" knowledge 
extend, skill is grounded on, or accompanied by, insight." 
And we may add, that the cultivation of science for its own 
sake, as the predominant aim, must ever constitute the essen- 
tial difference between a profession and a trade ; for as in the 
latter the art is rightfully considered exclusively as the means 
of gain, 80 the former must inevitably be degraded into a 
trade, whenever mercenary and sordid motives superse<le the 
scientific aim. Nor can it be deemed of slight importance in 
the formation of a professional class, such as we have ventured 
to describe it, that those destined for the medical profession 
should partakp of that education which is required in common 
for the liberal profossions, as an integral part of the gentry of 
the <'ountrv, with the 8«*nse and habit of a common training in 
their duties, moral and religious, in tlieir obligations as citizens, 
and in their sentiments of professional honour as gentlemen. 
L 



50 THE IMPORT OF IDl.AS. 

dignity of a liberal profession. This I repeat ; 
and I call the name of John Hunter to wit- 
ness, that the present rank possessed by all 
the members of our profession, as such, was 
achieved by the union therewith of compara- 
tive anatomy and physiology, the science of 
which is, by the essential nature of the pursuit, 
philosophy. And had Hunter performed no 
other service than that of thus bringing the 
w hole art of healing, medical and chirurgical, 
into an immediate connexion with the specu- 
lative sciences of nature, which, without refe- 
rence to their immediate practical application, 
are cultivated by the first and noblest minds 
for their own worth ; — if he had done no more 
than connect the medical profession with all- 
ennobling science by a bond of alliance, w hich 
never, without ignominy to the profession, and 
forfeiture of its best and most legitimate claim 
to that title, can henceforward be dissolved or 
broken ; — John Hunter would rightfully take 
his place among the most eminent benefactors 
of mankind, and have left a name which 
every naturalist must hear with reverence, and 
which no physician or surgeon can pronounce 
w^ithout gratitude and filial awe. 



APPENDIX. 
A. 

EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF POWEll. 

If Causes and Laws be riglitly assigned as the 
legitimate objects of inquiry in order to natural 
science; if the determination of these require some- 
what other and more than the mental substan- 
tiation of sensuous facts, under whatever degree 
of generality, by the understanding or faculty 
judging according to sense ; if they imply the 
apprehension of permanent being, of efficiency, of 
necessity, of finality, of unity, which, if they exist 
in nature, cannot be derived from, but must be 
presupposed in order to, sensible experience ; and 
if these, as principles of reasoning on nature, and 
of explainino^ its changes, be the result, and con- 
stitute essentially the character, of rational mind ; 
then it will not be denied that physical science is 
grounded on truths supersensuous and metaphy- 
sical, which we obtain by meditation on our own 
|)owers in and by the light of reason. 

This position cannot be better illustrated than 
by investigating the origin of our notion of cause 
and efficiency ; for the thought, which the term 
power designates, is one, which is neither de- 
rived nor deduced from our sensible experience. 



52 EVOLUriON OF THE 

The presentations to the senses are the effects and 
supposed manifestations of the powers adequate 
to produce them, but of the powers themselves 
we are thereby no wise cognizant : we see an 
apple, detached from the branch on which it 
hung-, fall to the ground, and we say that the fall 
is produced by the power of gravity ; we see the 
change, the motion, but the cause or power pro- 
ducing the phcEiiomenon is wholly beyond the 
limits of the senses. But neither can we in 
strictness deduce the existence of power from any 
change in outward nature, or from the corres- 
ponding impression on our senses; for the know- 
ledge afforded by the senses can convey no notion 
of that which is beyond and above all sensible 
experience. If therefore the notion of causative 
power be a legitimate assumption, occasioned in- 
deed by the presentation to the senses, though 
not obtained by them, it must be inferred, brought 
in, made use of, by the mind for its own purposes, 
namely for explaining or giving intelligibility to 
the phcEnomena. It is then in the human mind 
that we seek the ground and origin of the assump- 
tion of power, cause, efficiency ; and this ground 
we readily trace in the mind as that ultimate fact 
of the consciousness, which we call Will, as the 
power essentially of origination. Of this fact we 
can offer no proof, we can adduce no evidence 
beyond that of referring the inquirer to the facts 
of his own consciousness ; beyond this we cannot 
ascend, since it is an ultimate fact, and this so 
eminently that if we suppose any antecedent the 
term loses its meaning and contradicts itself. It is 



IDEA OF POWER. 53 

indeed true that the conscious will, of which we 
are now speaking, is mind, and is indissolubly con- 
nected in our thoughts with intelligence, though 
at the same time we have no difficulty in distin- 
guishing the will (as the originative and causative) 
from the intellect, which directs and guides it ; 
and hence indeed arises our capability of consi- 
dering the will abstractedly from intelligence, but 
in so doing it ceases to be all that which we mean 
by the term will, we give it a different name, and 
in this manner form to ourselves the notion of 
power, and as soon as this power manifests itself 
sensibly, of force. 

If however such be the true ground of our 
notion of power, it cannot be denied that, in attri- 
buting powers to outward nature, and in ascribing 
its changes to these as causes, the human mind 
silently transfers its own constitution to the out- 
ward, and assumes that the subjective ground of 
nature is in kind one with man's inward being. 
But how should this be otherwise? Man can 
acquire no knowledge except under the conditions 
of his own consciousness, and nothing can be in- 
telligible to him except by virtue of his own in- 
telligence ; he cannot conceive of any power or 
mode of action, of which he has not the ana- 
logon in his own powers and in the modes of 
agency of which he is conscious. He knows that 
his will is influenced, urged, nay, sometimes com- 
pelled by outward powers and agencies, and this 
experience, whilst it is for him the very ground 
of his belief in the reality of an outward world, 
convinces him that the influence, of which lit- 



54 EVOLUTION OF THE 

is conscious being the same as that of his own 
will, the cause must be of the same kind. " We 
are conscious," (says Herscliel''^, " of a power to 
move our limbs, and by their intervention other 
bodies ; and that this eifect is the result of a 
certain inexplicable process which we are aware 
of, but can in no way describe in words, by which 
we exert force." And he adds : " Though it may 
seem strange that matter should be capable of 
exerting on matter the same kind of effort, which 
judging alone from this consciousness, we might 
be led to regard as a mental one ; yet we cannot 
refuse the evidence of our senses, which show us 
that when we keep a spring stretched with one 
hand we feel an effort opposed exactly in the same 
way, as if we had ourselves opposed it with the 
other hand, or as it would be by that of another 
person." 

It must be recollected, however, that, if as we 
believe, the notion of power have no other origin 
than that of will as disclosed by our own consci- 
ousness, it has no other meaning when attributed 
to outward nature than that of will with the ab- 
straction of intelligence. But though it would be 
manifestly absurd to attribute to the powers of na- 
ture any conscious design, yet by the constitution 
of our own mind we are constrained to admit that 
their agencies so far partake of intelligence that 
they are adaptations to relative ends, in the unity 
of some final aim or purpose. Hence it is that we 
distinguish the power or agent from the mind that 

* Intr. to Nat. Phil. p. 86. 



IDEA OF POWER. 55 

directs it, and we say that the powers of nature, in 
and of themselves blind, brute, and unintelligent, 
act under Laws, by which we express the con- 
straint and forced subjection of a power or agent 
to an intelligence guiding and governing it as 
an alien and subject. 

And if by the examination of the facts of his 
consciousness, man comes unavoidably to the con- 
viction that the powers of nature are of the same 
kind in their essential ground as his own will, 
it will be scarcely possible for him, in meditating 
further on the mysterious agency at work in 
nature, not to consider it as part of the same 
moral operance, which his conscience reveals to 
him ; and whilst his moral being bears involun- 
tary testimony to the fact of the moral order and 
governance of the universe, recognized in the laws 
appointed by the wisdom of the Creator, he can- 
not but be convinced of the existence in nature 
of a contrariant and alien agency striving, though 
vainly striving, against the beauty, order and har- 
mony of the world. If, I say, in the light of our 
moral being we may rightly interpret the cha- 
racter of the physical world, and if in all the 
forms of nature the pravity of the subject is 
betrayed by evidences of the in)permanent, the 
unsufficing, the arbitrary, — of weakness, degene- 
racy and imperfection, — are we not bound to 
assume as a principle, for the purposes of physical 
science, and in behoof of that unity of the mind, 
which truth implies, the contrariety of the agent 
or subject in nature, and of the divine laws, by 
which it is at once actuated, coerced, and directed ? 



56 EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF POWER. 

At all events the assumption of a perfect law, 
coercing an imperfect subject, offers a solution of 
the difficulties, which must arise from denying 
the imperfections in nature : nor need we appre- 
hend any well founded religious objection to a 
view, which, in admitting the existence and in- 
fluence of evil no less in the physical than in 
the moral world, at the same time asserts its 
uniform conversion to good, by the benevolent 
all-might of the divine Legislator, whilst it offers 
the means and condition of reconciling physical 
science with the stedfast faith of Christianity. 



APPENDIX B. 

TRANSCENDENTAL ANATOMY. 

This parallel scale of evolution in the transient 
forms of embryonic life, and in the relatively 
abiding forms, which are constituent parts of 
nature's totality, has been tested by the accurate 
anatomical investigations of Meckel, Tiedemann, 
Miiller and others, in the development of every 
organ and system. They have most successfully 
vindicated this department of knowledge from the 
censure of the " mira indiligentia homimiin ,'' ex- 
pressed by Lord Bacon, who could hardly have 
anticipated the splendid achievements of embry- 
ogeny, by which the student of nature is privi- 
leged to enter the workshop, and *' prcesens esse 



TRAXSCEXDENTAL ANATOMY. 57 

cum art'ifex operatur et opus suum promovct:'* 
By the aid of comparative anatomy the process 
itself of the construction of organs has been un- 
folded to the armed eye of science, and therein the 
ground laid of a science, which, under the recently 
admitted name of transcendental anatomy, aims at 
establishing the law of organic genesis by substi- 
tuting the certainty of a scientific idea for the 
results of empirical observation, and at discovering 
the pattern and pre-existing model, according to 
which, and the genetic process itself by which, 
organic forms are constructed. In adopting, how- 
ever, this idea, which had its origin in the genial 
mind of the great poet Goethe, and which has 
been expanded by Oken, Spix, Cams, and others 
into the principle that all the varied organic 
forms are but modifications of one simple primary 
form, and that for instance, the osseous system 
in every part, and in its most complicated total 
result, is but the repetition of a simple vertebra, 
— in adopting, I say, the principle of organic mo- 
difiability and unity of composition, we must 

* *' Mira enim est hominum circa hanc rem indiligentia. 
Contemplantur siquidem naturam tantummodo desultorie et 
per periodos, et postquam corpora fuerint ahsoluta ac com- 
pleta, et non in operatione sua. Quod si artijicis alicujus 
ingenia et industriam explorare et contemplari quis cuperet, 
is non tantuni materias rudes artis, at que delude opera per- 
fecta, conspicere desideraret ; sed potius prcesens esse cum 
artifex operatur et opus suum promovet. Atque simile quid- 
dam circa naturam faciendum est." Nov. Org. Lib. ii. p. 3,5.5. 
Vol. iv. 4to edit. 



58 TRANSCENDENTAL ANATOMY. 

never forget that insight of the law, to any useful 
purpose of science, must be completed by a know- 
ledge of the conditions which determine the varia- 
tion and differences of form and structure.* 



APPENDIX C. 

GRADATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 

The marks of advancing perfection may be thus 
more fully stated : 

1st. The necessity of grades. The resistance 
of a contrariant subject in nature is throughout 
implied ; and if the process be that of converting 
resistance into willing subjection and cooperation, 
it cannot, from the imperfection of the subject, be 
effected otherwise than gradatively. The divine 
law can only compel and coerce the brute and 
unintelligent powers of nature ; — in infusing light 
and life on the same, as in the bee and elephant, 
it may induce and guide, and finally on rational 
man it acts by obligation and conviction. 

2nd. As nature tends to integrate all organic 
forms into one comprehensive whole, in like manner 
every type of organic being is the expression and 
measure of its tendency to represent, and to in- 
tegrate itself as, the whole of which it is a part; 
and the grades in the ascending scale of integra- 

* A useful summary of these views for the English reader 
will be found in Anderson on the Comparative Anatomy of 
the Nervous System, London, 1837. 



GRADATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 59 

tion, which are retained and exhibited at once in 
the total organism of nature, each organic being 
has to pass through successively, in a series of 
which, each transient form is superseded by ano- 
ther of greater perfection, until it has attained its 
specific rank in the scale of individuality. 

3rd. Every organic whole, from the polyp up 
to man, indicates a higher and more effective 
power of unity, and, therefore, of more perfect 
individuality in proportion as the parts are more 
numerous, yet at the same time more various, 
each having a several end ; while yet the inter- 
dependence of each on the other, the subordina- 
tion of the lower to the higher, and the intimate 
union of all to the constitution of One, shall be 
perfected in an equal proportion. 

4th. As every organic whole is the result of 
an antecedent principle, which, as power, is ex- 
clusive of parts, another mark of advancing per- 
fection will be when the partless and indivisible 
unity is itself represented by some visible and 
central product, to which all the various parts 
converge, as the bond, medium and condition of 
the union and communion, and of the interdepen- 
dence of all in their constitution to One. Such is 
the brain, which represents, in respect of power, 
tliat unity which the total shape or exterior ex- 
liibits in respect of sight or sense. 

5th. As every finite creature has external rela- 
tions, tljc comparative perfection will consist in 
the emancipation and independence of the creature 
from the alirn external powers, and its compara- 
tive superiority over tiieni and power of com- 



60 GRADATIOX OF AMMAL LIFE. 

manding them, with the facility of adapting itself 
to its external relations in the greatest variety, 
and under the greatest change of these relations. 
And when we add to this the power of using 
external nature as an alien, of using what it 
neither assimilates nor admits, it is more than 
independence, it is sovereignty. 

6th. If the aim of animated being be the 
achievement of sensibility, and of the subordi- 
nation of the inferior powers thereto, by which 
the animal exists from itself, in itself, and, though 
imperfectly, for itself, in order to the full presen- 
tation of this ultimate end, nature must not only 
feel, she must know her own being; that is, mind 
must be superadded to life. 



APPENDIX D. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF MAn's BODILY FRAME. 

In a comparison of the frame and capabilities 
of man with those of the inferior animals, if we 
take the human frame as the ideal standard of 
form, it will be found that all others present so 
many declensions from the Idea, by exaggeration 
or defect : and it will be found from this survey, 
that man is unquestionably endowed with that 
structure, the perfection of which is revealed in 
such a balanced relation of the parts to a whole 
as may best fit it for a being exercising intelligent 
choice, and destined for moral freedom. It is not, 



man's kodily frame. 61 

therefore, an absolute perfection of the consti* 
tuents singly, but the proportional development 
of all, and their harmonious constitution to One, 
for which we contend ; — a constitution which im- 
plies, in a far higher degree than in any other 
animal, a balanced relation of the living powers 
and faculties, and which requires, therefore, in 
man pre-eminently the endowment of rational will 
as necessary for the control and adjustment of 
the balance. Man has not the quick hearing of 
the timid herbivorous animals, but it was not 
intended that he should catch the sound of dis- 
tant danger and be governed by his fears; he 
has not the piercing sight of the eagle, nor the 
keen scent of the beast of prey, but neither was 
man intended to be the fellow of the tiger, or 
a denizen of the forest. Hence the departure 
from the perfect proportion of man, which we 
observe in the inferior animals, may be regarded 
as Deformities by exaggeration or defect, de- 
pendent upon a preponderance of a part that 
necessitates a particular use, or the absence of a 
part that deprives the animal of a power, and in 
both instances alike abrogates that freedom, for 
which provision is made in the balanced relation 
of the constituents of the human fabric, which 
permits the free choice of means, and the adap* 
tation to any purpose determined by an intelligent 
free-will. Dilate the head, and you have a symptom 
of disease : protrude the jaws, you have a vora- 
cious animal : lengthen the ears, timidity is ex- 
pressed : let the nose project, and the animal is 
governed by its scent : enlarge the belly, and you 



62 CHAKACTEllISTICS OF 

are reminded of the animal appetites : long arms 
may fit him for an inhabitant of the trees, and a 
fit companion for the ape ; and predominant length 
of legs are infallibly associated with the habits of 
the wading or leaping animals. In all, regarding 
man's form with reference to his destination as 
the ideal standard, the means become ends, de 
formity prevails, and becomes the badge of unin- 
telligent slavery to the mere animal nature. 

This may be further illustrated by a general 
and brief comparison of the components of the 
skeleton in the vertebrated animals with that of 
man.* In considering the skull, it will be found, 
that man, of all animals, has the largest and 
roundest cranium ; from the ape to the fish, the 
brain case decreases in capacity, in correspon- 
dence with a proportionably diminishing develop- 
ment. But in the same ratio, the parts allotted 
to the senses, and the parts merely subservient to 
the preparation of the food, increase in size. In 
looking at the head of the horse and the dog, it will 
be readily observed how much the cranium recedes, 
and the jaws protrude ; but in birds, reptiles, and 
fish, the proportions are so altered by the diminu- 
tion of the cranium, that the whole head appears al- 
most to consist of the jaws ; — witness the mand ibles 
of the stork and pelican, and the enormous jaws of 
the crocodile and shark. And we may add, that 
man is the only animal that has a prominent chin. 



* The Author gladly emhraces this opportunity of acknou- 
ledging his obligation to that distinf^uished cultivator of phy- 
siolof^ical science, Tiedemann. See his Zoologie V" Band. 



MAX's BODILY FRAiME. 63 

This distinguishing character of the human skull, 
found in the proportion of the brain case to the 
jaws when compared with the same in the inferior 
animals, the ingenious Camper devised the method 
of more accurately determining, by means of what 
has been called the Facial Angle. It consists in 
drawing one line from the most prominent part of 
the forehead, to the sockets of the upper incisor 
teeth and a second, which describes the ground 
plane of the cranium, through the external meatus 
of the ear, and lower edge of the nose, and which, 
cutting the first on the upper jaw, forms with it a 
determinate angle : and it is evident that this angle 
will be greater in proportion to the development of 
the forehead and recession of the superior maxilla, 
less or more acute in proportion to the projection 
of the upper jaw and recession of the forehead.* 
According to this mode of relative admeasurement, 
it appears that the facial angle in the European, 
exceeds that in the Negro ; and, it is worthy of 
notice, that the Greek sculptors, who were careful 
to mark strongly, or even exaggerate those circum- 
stances which peculiarly mark the human character, 
have often exceeded the rij^rht antrle in the ideal 
anatomy of their deities, though at the same time 
with the discriminative taste, which prevented 
them from exceeding the limit, beyond which the 



• See Camper's Treatise Uber dett natur lichen Unterschied 
der Gcsichtsziuje im Menschen. Compare Ciivicr on the view 
of the profile and tranverse section of the cranium: Lemons 
d' Anatom'u: Coi/ijtartc, Tom. ii. p. 0. aru) liluineiil)ach'8 view 
from abovf, or hinl's-eyo view of the cranium : Dc generis 
liumtiny vdrirtnlr vtitivd. 



64 CHARACTEtllSTlCS OF 

form would have become a symptom of disease. 
It follows then, that the size of the brain case in 
man, proportionate to the development of the 
brain, indicates the predominance of this organ 
over those of the senses, which may be regarded 
as the measure of the subserviency of the animal 
to the outward excitants, and over the organs for 
the preparation of the food, the preponderance 
of which mark the subjugation of the creature to 
the mere animal needs, — that the predominant 
development of the cranium, I say, is the mark, 
symbol and condition of man's characteristic excel- 
lence, as pre-eminently gifted with mind. 

In order, however, to prevent any misconception 
with regard to the meaning of the above position, 
the reader is requested not to confound it with the 
attempt which has been made to found a physiog- 
nomical system on the form of the cranium ; and 
without pretending to give an opinion on the value 
and merits of that system, it will not be out of 
place to draw the attention of its supporters to 
a question, which, sooner or later, must claim 
their serious consideration. It is well known 
that Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, from numerous 
observations, have been led to determine that 
there are certain regions or parts of the skull 
which are more or less developed in different in- 
dividuals. They believe that, where these parts 
are peculiarly prominent, it is the indication of a 
greater development of the brain at that spot ; and 
that such being uniformly connected with the 
manifestation of certain dispositions or faculties, 
they infer that the portion of brain at that part is 



man's bodily frame. 65 

the organ of that faculty, intellectual activity, or 
moral sentiment. Hence, in their opinion, the 
relative prominence of the different cranial regions 
may be used as the measure, or serve as the indi- 
cation, of the predominant propensities, feelings, 
or mental endowments of the individual. 

It has been generally admitted that there is a 
mutual relation and interdependence between the 
brain and the manifestation of the intellectual 
powers, and that the greater size of the brain in 
man is in some connexion with his higher mental 
endowments. The admission, however, involves a 
far more difficult question respecting the nature of 
this connexion : and we may here inquire, whether 
the views of Gall and Spurzheim tend in any de- 
gree to solve this difficulty ; and whether their 
system is adequate to its proposed object, — that of 
determining the condition of the reciprocal rela- 
tion between the brain and our moral and intel- 
lectual nature, and of forming a physiognomical 
scheme, whereby tlie configuration and develop- 
ment of the brain shall be shown to be a safe 
index of our propensities and faculties. 

They tell us that the brain is composed of a 
plurality of organs, each of which has its appro- 
priate functions. Now, what are we to understand 
by the word Organ, of which they have given us 
no definite meaning or explanation ? In some 
sense or other, an organ must be instrumental or 
conditional, however, laxly we employ the term. 
It may be as in a musical instrument, where 
tlie sound or utterance is given by the player ; 
and in which all that is expressed belongs to the 

F 



66 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

performer, and might be accomplished by the aid 
of various instruments indifferently. It may be 
again as in a machine, wherein, by the contrivance 
and adjustment of the mechanism, the power and 
its results reside wholly in the instrument. Or it 
may be as in the animal body, where there is 
indeed a mechanism, but which is at the same 
time, the product of a vital power ; and thus be- 
comes the organ in and by which the vital power 
continues to manifest itself as the appropriate 
function of the same. If a cerebral organ exist 
at all, it must be of the latter kind. In this we 
have three things which especially are to be noted, 
as fulfilling the conception of an organ ; — namely, 
1. the power which sets the organ in motion, the 
principle of its activity and action; — 2. the struc- 
ture in and by which this principle is manifested or 
becomes an act ; — and, lastly, the product of that 
act. Perhaps the best illustration, in the present 
instance, is that of an organ for motion, a muscle ; 
this consists of a bundle of fibres, with the pro- 
perty of contractility, attached at the extremities 
to one or more moveable parts, and to which a 
nerve proceeds for the purpose of conveying the 
influence producing the contraction. In this in- 
stance we have that which is incorporeal, mani- 
festing itself in and by a corporeal organ : in con- 
sequence of some mental operation, volition deter- 
mines the contraction of the muscular fibres, and 
the part to which they are attached is moved 
according to its mechanical condition. Thus an 
organ, in its product, its mode of action or appli- 
cation, has uniformly reference to the forms of 
sensuous intuition. 



man's bodily frame. 67 

But how is it with the cerebral organs, described 
by Gall and Spurzheim, with the organs of secre- 
tiveness, approbation, or ideality ? What is the 
function of that particular packet of medullary 
fibres, entitled the organ of Self-esteem ? Is self- 
esteem some particular motion of these fibres ; and 
if so, what sort of motion ? Is self-esteem the 
product or the cause of that motion ? If it be 
the cause of the motion, what end or purpose 
does the motion answer ? If it be a product, what 
evidence can be brought to the senses that it 
is so ? 

It will be said, perhaps, that this mode of ques- 
tioning is unfair, and that a kind of evidence is 
required, which is not only not demanded, but is 
not applicable to the subject in question ; and that 
although the mode of activity cannot be demon- 
strated, yet that the conception of the brain or its 
parts being a condition of thought or feeling is not 
invalidated. It will be said, perhaps, that we 
have abundant proof of the exercise of the intellect 
being rendered impossible, or its operations dis- 
turbed, by causes manifestly referable solely to the 
condition of the brain, — and therefore, that the 
brain is that part upon which the exercise and ope- 
rations of the intellect depend ; and if attributable 
to the whole mass, we may assign, upon proper 
evidence, particular functions to particular parts. 

But if we admit the premises, is the conclusion 
legitimate? If we grant that thinking is sus- 
pended or disturbed because the brain is injured 
or injuriously affected, are we therefore to con- 
clude that thinkinof is the function of the brain ? 



68 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

Are we, in other words, to believe that thought 
is effected by, or is the result of, any operation 
or mode of action of the brain ? This, surely, 
does not follow from the data, and if asserted, 
it would be perfectly fair to ask what intelligible 
conception could be formed of a process in which 
no conceivable mode of cerebral action could pro- 
duce the result? For, imagine any possible sort 
of material operation in the bundles of medullary 
fibres, — conceive them to be analogous to muscles, 
to glands, to an electrical or galvanic machine ; — 
what is the common mark in the operation of all 
these as material agents ? This ; — that the result 
is a phcenomenon, that it is, or might be, presented 
to the senses : whereas thought, being in its very 
nature and conception that which can never be- 
come the object of the senses, wants that common 
mark, which would characterize it as the possible 
result of a material agency. The assumption, in 
fact, of an organ of thinking, is the confounding 
of things which are essentially disparate, and of 
different kinds. 

It might still be supposed, that there was some 
lurking power in the term " condition," where 
we have admitted that the exercise of the in- 
tellect may be disturbed or altered by causes re- 
ferable to the state of the brain, and that, there- 
fore, the brain influences the intellectual process, 
or that the latter is, in some sense, dependent upon 
the brain. But the utmost that can be legiti- 
mately inferred, is, that the brain is the condition 
of the corporeal manifestation of mind, of the 
mind as far as it has relation to the body. To go 



man's BODILY FRAMf:. 69 

further would be to confound condition with effi- 
cient cause, and we should be no more justified 
in stating the brain to be the efficient and ope- 
rative source of mind, than in stating the stomach 
to be so, because it is the condition of the con- 
tinued bodily existence of an intelligent being. 

Passing on to the consideration of the other 
components of the skeleton, we may next examine 
the Trunk ; and it is evident that in man we have 
mainly to regard the Spine in relation to its pur- 
poses as a central column of support, in aid of his 
erect position. Now this, the vertebral column, 
consists of a pile of bones, named vertebra, dis- 
tinguished as those of the neck, of the back, and 
of the loins, and the pillar rests below upon the 
wedge-shaped sacrum, having the coccyx as an 
appendage, which forms the tail in inferior 
animals. And in the human spine, characterized 
especially by its serpentine bend, the various re- 
gions thus named are proportionately and harmo- 
niously developed ; but in the inferior orders of 
animals, each region acquires some peculiar pro- 
minence, in obvious relation to some necessitating 
purpose, influencive of the character and habits 
of the agent. In birds, the region of the neck is 
peculiarly long, serving as a balancing pole in 
flight, or as in the aquatic birds answering the 
purpose of a fishing-rod ; whilst the region of the 
back is very short, and that of the loins is wanting 
altogether. In the Mammalia, various proportions 
are observed : in the Cetacea, the neck is so short 
that it appears to he wanting ; in the giraffe, it is 



70 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

as remarkably long, serving to lift the head of the 
animal as a browsing apparatus ; and in many, the 
tail is extraordinarily developed, answering the 
purpose of a ** prehensile hand to the monkey, a 
trowel to the beaver, a rudder to the whale, and a 
leaping-pole to the kangaroo." Of the pelvis, 
we need observe no more, than that in man it is 
the most complete ; for its breadth and develop- 
ment form a necessary part of the adaptation of 
his frame to the erect posture. In looking to the 
chest, we find in man a structure peculiarly ap- 
propriate to respiration, and this in connexion 
with speech and with the expression of feelings 
and emotions, as characteristic of a life raised 
into intimate union with mind : whilst in the 
inferior animals it has subsidiary offices, which 
bring it in closer relation to the organs of loco- 
motion ; in some quadrupeds, by a greater number 
of vertebrce and ribs ; in birds, by an expansion 
of the sternum ; in serpents, by a multiplicity 
of ribs, whieh serve the purpose of feet ; or it 
bears the traces of imperfect development, as in 
the frogs ; and fish cannot be said to have a tho-^ 
rax at all. 

If we compare the lower limbs of man with the 
hinder extremities of quadrupeds, we again find 
the peculiar character and perfection of the former 
in their adaptation and appropriation to maintain 
the balance of the body in the erect posture. In 
some, indeed, the hinder limbs are so formed as to 
permit the creature to obtain, for a time, the free 
use of the fore extremities ; but the endowment 
serves but to mark, as in the monkey, that it was 



man's bodily fhame. :71 

intended for a climbing animal ; and the extra- 
ordinary length and strength of the legs of the 
kangaroo show only its aptitude to leap. And if, 
in birds, the support of the body is effected by two 
legs, it leaves the anterior extremities free only for 
the purpose of aiding in, and of executing, a diffe- 
rent mode of locomotion. In man alone the lower 
extremities, providing wholly the means of support 
and progression, leave the upper limbs as instru- 
ments, the use of which is entirely at the choice of 
the agent. 

And in aid of this purpose, we find in man the 
most perfect upper extremity. From the ape to 
the fish, the different components diminish in 
number, development, and variety of motion. 
This is especially noticeable in the hand ; which, 
in consequence of the length of the fingers, the 
number of articulations, and the multiplicity of 
their movements, especially in consequence of the 
capability of opposing the thumb to the fingers, 
becomes an instrument fitted for the most delicate 
and varied operations directed by the skill and 
intellect of man. Compare, in this respect, this 
flexile and modifiable apparatus with the single 
digit of the extremity of the horse, on the horny, 
tip of which the weight of the animal (by an 
admirable mechanism indeed) is supported and 
carried ; or with the abortive hand of the whale, 
suflRciently like the human to be so called, but 
retracted, enveloped in skin, and degenerated into 
a fin, that merely serves as an oar in propelling 
the animal through the water. It might be said, 
perhaps, that the hand of the monkey claims the 



72 CHARACTEKISTICS OF 

praise of as great perfection as that of man, but 
the dwindled thumb marks its imperfection for 
handling and for touch ; and the arms even of the 
anthropoeid oran otan, lengthened to deformity, 
irresistibly prove their use to be little else than 
for grasping and climbing. 

In the contemplation of the human skeleton, its 
most striking characteristic, however, and that 
which contradistinguishes it from the bony fabric 
of all other animals, is its adaptation to the erect 
position ; an attribute not only peculiar to man, 
but without which, his structure could not cor- 
respond to his spiritual endowments, since it is 
at once the need and symbol of a being raised 
above the servile condition of the mere animal 
nature. 

Thus the skull is poised, with only a slight 
preponderance anteriorly, at the top of the ver- 
tebral column ; and a plumb line, dropped from the 
point of its support, falls through the centre of 
gravity between the feet, which present the base 
of support to the whole towering fabric. We re- 
mark, however, that the supporting parts do not 
range with this line. The spine is bent like an 
italic S ; it recedes at the chest, in order to give 
room to its cavity, and at the same time is har- 
moniously inflected forwards at the loins and 
neck, in order to facilitate its balance over the 
points of support ; and it cannot be doubted that 
these curves contribute to the capability of bending 
and changing the position of the trunk, without 
endangering the loss of balance. But the balance 



man's bodily frame. 73 

of the body is also greatly aided by the breadth 
of the human pelvis, which, supplying a broad 
base of support, permits the inclinations of the 
trunk without the necessity of altering the posi- 
tion of the lower limbs. The lateral breadth of 
the pelvis, however, throws the heads of the thigh 
bones, upon which the weight of the body is 
transmitted, to some distance on each side of the 
line, that falls through the centre of gravity ; and 
in order to provide a compensating adjustment, the 
thigh bones are placed obliquely, inclining to- 
wards each other, so that in the upright posture 
with the feet together, they touch at the knees, 
and the weight is then received upon the heads 
of the leg bones or tibice, which stand perpen- 
dicularly under the centre of gravity. And these 
again are planted upon the arch of the foot or 
instep, on which the whole weight of the body 
securely rests. Then, in order to secure in the 
foot the requisite firmness in standing, we find 
that it is articulated with the leg at right angles, 
so that both the heel and toes touch the ground ; 
and the joint is placed nearer the posterior than 
the anterior part of the foot, so as to increase the 
base of support in that direction towards which 
the body tends most to fall ; besides which, the 
weight is here received on the inner side of the 
foot, where it is most arched, thereby offering not 
only the advantage of a strong support, but one 
which is highly elastic, yielding without injury 
in alighting upon the feet, and acting as a spring 
in progression. 

Thus the majestic column of the human form 



74 CHARACTERISTICS OF 

is raised and built up upon its pedestal, and the 
living pillar, readily maintaining its equipoise, bears 
aloft its capital, whilst the upper limbs are left 
free to adlibitive motion. Thus the place of the 
head, as the corporeal representative of that which 
perceives and wills, the disposition of the senses 
therein as the media of intelligence, and of the or- 
gans of speech as the interpreters of thought, and 
the arrangement of the upper limbs as instruments 
of volition, no longer subservient to mere animal 
needs, — all impress us with the conviction that 
even the skeleton cannot be intelligible to us, 
without admitting that the human bodily frame 
was designed for the instrument and dwelling of a 
. being contradistinguished from and elevated above 
all other animals : — 

A creature, who, not prone, 
And brute as other creatures, but endued 
With sanctity of reason, might erect 
His stature, and upright, with front serene, 
Govern the rest, self knowing. 

Man alone is erect. It is to this posture that 
the body of man owes the character, impressed on 
the whole frame, of its emancipation from subser- 
viency to the mere animal needs, and becomes 
expressive of mind and of free and intelligent 
action. It will be seen that the lower limbs, 
answering the purposes of support and locomo- 
tion, have alone any obvious or necessitated 
utility ; while the upper extremities are, in con- 
sequence, left at liberty as the ready and facile 
instruments of his will. Hence too the senses are 
best freed from their servitude to the bodily wants, 



man's bodily frame. 75 

and the countenance is raised as the expressive 
exponent of thoughts and feelings, which the 
mouth declares and interprets by words. And 
thus as the stem bears the corolla, the head is 
carried on high, as the most noble part of the 
frame, which it surmounts; all the rest of the 
body seems as if intended to carry it ; and when 
considered in its fitness for expression, it may 
be said to be representative of the whole man. 

If principally connected with erect posture the 
body is admirable and acquires its human charac- 
ter, w^e shall no less find, in directing our attention 
to the organs of motion in man, the aptitude and 
capabilities of a being designed for intelligent 
freedom. We find in man the organic structure 
adapted for the greatest variety of motion. It is 
true, indeed, that many of the mammalia are so 
constituted, as greatly to excel man in particular 
kinds of locomotion ; but we shall in vain look for 
the same combination and mastery of his powers, 
which the ere^t posture implies. The monkey 
climbs and jumps with a facility truly extraordi- 
nary ; but it is with difficulty, or only for a short 
time, that he raises himself into the erect position. 
Dogs, horses, deer, excel man in swiftness, but 
they cannot climb nor walk erect. The otter, the 
beaver, and the seal, swim well, but it is their only 
boast above creatures of their own kind. And 
whales or other cetaceous animals, though admi- 
rably adapted for swimming, have no other mode 
of locomotion. Man, on the other hand, stands 
and walks erect, runs, jumps, climbs, swims, — 



76 CHARACTEKISTICS OF 

man alone, can so modify his frame, that it is 
in his power to waive the high privilege of the 
harmony and balance of his faculties ; and by 
concentering his volition to any one property or 
perfection, we have reason to believe that he 
might equal or excel the beast, most characterized 
by that perfection, — outrun the deer, outwrestle 
the bear, climb with the monkey. In short, man 
has the most modifiable organs of motion, and 
is most capable of subjugating them to his will, 
and of rendering them the instruments of his 
varied purposes. 

The capability of varied motion in man depends 
greatly upon the facility with which the different 
parts of the body, especially the limbs, move at 
the same time in opposite directions ; a power, 
which not only permits variety of movement, and 
confers an aptitude of expressive action, but like- 
wise gives preeminently a character of suppleness, 
ease, and freedom to the total motion. But it is 
the equipoise of his body in connection with the 
erect position, which gives the unity to any totality 
of movement, and determines the attitude or car- 
riage necessary to preserve its balance. In order 
to balance the body, whether at rest or in motion, it 
is necessary that man should exert an incomparably 
greater number of muscles than the inferior animals ; 
and for the same reason a far greater effort of his 
volition is required for adjusting the proportional 
action of each, and for combining and harmoni- 
zing the actions of all ; in short, of all animals 
man must be most the master of his own body. 

It is further deserving of notice that the inflec- 



man's bodily frame. 77 

tions of the trunk, the motions of the limbs, and the 
play of the several joints, all tend to the circular 
and curvilineal in their movements, a circumstance 
which mainly tends to confer on human motion the 
character of Beauty. And it may be safely affirmed 
that, under all the varieties of expressive movement, 
the very structure and mechanism of the body 
tend to reduce its motions to the form of the 
beautiful, or resolve them into grace ; a fact of 
which we may convince ourselves in watching the 
sinuous movements of the dance, wherein, aided 
by the totality of motion in the dancer, they pre- 
sent a harmony by continuity, a problem of grace 
which is ever solving and ever beginning anew. 

Beauty of attitude, and grace of carriage, are, 
however, intimately connected with the mainte- 
nance of the balance and equipoise of the body. 
No attitude can be beautiful in which the idea of 
rest is not conveyed by that permanence and se- 
curity, which results from a perfectly felt balance. 
'* Grace of carriage, requires not only a perfect 
freedom of motion, but also a firmness of step, 
arising from a constant bearing of the centre of 
gravity over the base of support ;"* it includes 
ease and security. And in both, whether it be 
motion becoming fixed as attitude, or attitudes 
presenting themselves in the shaping flow of 
motion, beauty and grace reveal themselves in self- 
command and in freedom made manifest by self- 
control. In short, look at the body in any position 
or attitude, in any of the incidental or casual forms 

• Arnott's PhvRirs, p. 128. 



78 man's bodily frame. 

arising out of the free and unconstrained move- 
ments of man healthy in frame and unshackled by 
conventional usages, and the truth will force it- 
self on your conviction. Pass in revievr the pon- 
derous strength of the Hercules, the agile Mercury, 
the graceful ease of the Antinous, the reclining 
Ilyssus, all the animated forms of the frieze of the 
Parthenon, — w^hatever Greek art has signalized or 
modern genius has realized, — witness the sports of 
children, or go even to the wild denizens of the 
American forest, — and proof will no longer be 
needed that grace and beauty are inherent in, not 
accidents of, the human body, as the fit instrument 
of human freedom and intelligence, and the trans- 
lucent medium, as it were, of man's proper and 
spiritual being. 

I conclude with the profound observation of 
Rudolphi : " Es ist eine grosse Kluft zwischen dem 
Menschen und den Thieren, die durxh 7iichts aus- 
gefullt wird,'' There is a chasm between man and 
animals which no ingenuity can fill up or over-' 
bridge.* And we pause with wondering awe, 
when the refined researches of anatomy bring us 
suddenly back with startling evidence to that re- 
cord of primeval wisdom, which marks emphati- 
cally the distinctive epoch of creation : God created 
man in his own image. 

* Physiologic 1*" Band, p. 37. 



79 



APPENDIX E. 



HUNTERS PATHOLOGY. 



In tracing the revival of Medicine in the middle 
ages from the Alchemists to the morning twilight 
of the Helmonts, and thence to Sydenham, Boer- 
haave, Hoffmann, and Stahl, — the main feature of 
its history is the obstinate struggle of the Rational 
or Galenic Schools, with the daring half-en- 
lightened empirics of the Chemical sect. But 
what hope of science could Medicine lay claim 
to in the hasty generalizations and the mistaken 
theory of the elements, humors, and qualities, ad- 
vanced by the Rationalists, Galenists, or by those 
under whatever other name who governed the 
profession with the leaden sceptre of a pedantic 
routine during the reign of the so called Aristo- 
telian Logic ? What approach to the certainty of 
science could medicine boast under the audacious 
and blundering quackery of their rivals the che- 
mical sect? What advance in truth could be ex- 
pected even from the great mind of Boerhaave, 
whilst trammelled by the errors of the latro-che- 
mical school, of which he was the founder? Or 
what progress in knowledge could be anticipated 
from his no less illustrious contemporary Stahl, 
who confounded life with the conscious soul ? 

It was a great step in the advancement of our 
profession, and a blessing to it in this country, 



80 HUNTERS PATHOLOGY. 

when Sydenham, following the example of the 
Father of medicine, united with science common 
sense, observation, and experience. It was a great 
improvement in the study of disease when morbid 
anatomy began to be cultivated, and the appear- 
ances after death were studied in connexion with 
the peculiar symptoms and sufferings during life, 
as has been done by Morgagni, Portal, and Baillie. 
And it is not without a feeling of congratulation, 
that we find men's minds turned from the merely 
logical methods of system and nosological arrange- 
ment, and the study of names exchanged for that 
of diseases, our knowledge of which is at present 
too imperfect to permit successful generalization 
and classification; though, in avoiding the error of 
our predecessors, who forgot that their systems 
of Nosology were only provisional, we are perhaps 
too much disposed to overlook the advantage of 
these as needful aids in the study of medicine. But 
the source from which we must expect the great 
light in constructing the science of Pathology, is 
the investigation of the latent processes (as Bacon 
named them*) by which disease is produced, or 
rather in which it essentially consists, and which 
correspond to what have been technically and less 
happily called proximate causes. If we are not 
to blunder on empirically, we must begin with 



* ** Inventio, in omni generatione et motu^ latentis pro- 
cessus continuati ab efficiente manifesto et materia manifesta 
usque ad forman inditayn." Nov. Org. Lib. Aph. i. Bacon 
uses the term forma, as forma formans, natura naturans, 
fons emanationis, and equivalent to law. 



hunter's pathology. 81 

Disease, not as a datum, but as a problem to be 
solved ; and in order to its solution, the phaeno- 
mena of disordered functions must be studied, as 
signs of the decrement of vital energy by excess 
or defect, and by altered balance or changed pre- 
dominance, of the vital forces. 

It was alone from a philosophical physiology, 
like that of Hunter, that such a study of disease in 
behoof of a scientific pathology could originate, 
and it was upon this basis that he prosecuted his 
pathological researches. The appeal to philoso- 
phical principles in Hunter's works was indeed 
the cause of their being a closed volume to his 
less enlightened contemporaries : but, though the 
principles implied or expressed subjected them 
to the scorn and neglect of those less embued 
with the spirit of philosophy, the results of those 
principles, verified as they were by facts, have 
gradually and insensibly forced themselves on the 
conviction of the Profession ; and though adopted 
silently, and without acknowledgment, as if the 
authors themselves had forgotten or were ignorant 
from whence they were derived, they now form 
the very groundwork of all books, treatises, and 
lectures on professional subjects. 

In his pathology Hunter, by contemplating life 
as an agency working under the control of law, 
remained true to the principle already established 
in his physiology. And one of the first fruits of 
this pregnant principle was the clear perception of 
the unity of the living body as a Constitution, by 
virtue of which it forms a system of interdependent 
part<;, and a constitution of balanced forces mutually 

G 



82 



HUXTER S P ATHOrOGY 



reacting- and combining to one end. This is the 
very meaning of the term '' Constitution," as applied 
to the animal economy ; and it may not be amiss 
here to remind the Reader that hence we obtain, 
likewise, the meaning of the term " Health," as 
that state, which consists in the balance of the 
powers constituting the life of an animated body, 
and an accordant state of the structures and organs, 
in and by means of which the functions of these 
powers are exercised and directed. But these 
powers may and do exist in various degrees of 
intensity and of relative subordination in different 
individuals; the result is what we call the indi- 
vidual's constitution, and all diseases and dis- 
orders referable to any disturbance of this specific 
harmony are Constitutional Diseases. 

Hunter saw, however, that, in order to the satis- 
factory solution of the problem of disease in ac- 
cordance with the laws of Vital Dynamics, the 
conditions of its origin and progress required a more 
searching inquiry than had hitherto been attempted. 
In his account of Susceptibility we may note not 
only the important observations on the specific 
susceptibility of particular parts, and of parti- 
cularly constituted individuals to special causes of 
morbid action ; but in connecting it with the uni- 
versal law of Excitability and Resistance, we see 
the scientific ground on which was placed his dis- 
tinction of Power and Action. He saw too the 
necessity of assuming a Disposition or proneness 
in the individual to this or that form of disease, 
as to gout or scrofula; and with this was con- 
nected his pliilosophical view of Hereditary ten- 



hunter's pathology. 83 

dencies, announced in the just observation that 
the term '' hereditary,'' should be applied not to 
the disease, which becomes the heir-loom, but to 
the predisposition in which it originates. A preg- 
nant subject not only unexhausted, but scarcely 
opened, farther insight into which might not 
only aid us in the discovery of the law of the pro- 
pagation, and transmission by descent, of mal- 
formation, of disease, and of insanity, but might 
throw a light on the obscure problem of the 
variety of the human races, of degeneracy, and of 
the awful mystery of a life admitting, and be- 
coming permanently possessed by, an alien and 
hostile power.* 

But the principles thus obtained would have 
been incomplete without bringing the various 
perturbations and disorders of function, which con- 
stitute the phaenomena of disease, under the law 
of the unity of life. And so fully was Hunter im- 
pressed with the importance of this subject, that 
we find him frequently recurring, and devoting a 
considerable portion of his lectures, to a con- 
sideration of Sympathy, the term being intended 
to express the community, and, as it were, consent 
of feeling and action, which preserves the bond of 

• Some further explanation may be deemed requisite for the 
elucidation of the latter part of this paragraph ; the Reader, 
however, is requested to accept provisionally, in lieu of a more 
detailed comment, a statement of the Author's view that the 
various forms of Degeneracy form part of the problem, and 
admit of satisfactory explanation from the principle of evil 
renitency, indicated in a former note on the evolution of the 
idea of Power. 



84 hunter's pathology, 

interdependence in all the parts and actions of a- 
living body, in their constitution to one organic 
whole. He saw that it was from a knowledge 
of Morbid Sympathy that we are enabled to 
anticipate and discriminate the immediate and 
remote effects of injury, or to understand the means 
by which a removal of the injurious cause, or a 
restoration from its effects may be accomplished ; 
and that in the conditions of sympathy we are to 
study the nature and end of Constitutional Irri- 
tation. 

It was probably during this study of the relations 
and nature of disordered functions that Hunter 
framed for himself a language, which, if it exposes 
him to the charge of minting terms, objectionable 
from their novelty and obscurity, ought not in 
candour to be condemned without weighing the 
counterbalancing advantages they may possess of 
philosophical accuracy. We are at first startled 
with such phrases, as the " stimulus of necessity," 
the " stimulus of death ; " but the perplexity will 
be greatly removed, if the student reflect that, as 
all appetence implies want, and as therefore the 
living subject may be excited by the absence of 
what it needs, so likewise that the sense of depri- 
vation may become no less a stimulus than that 
which acts as a positive excitant. Again, by the 
term " action," which has called forth much 
severe criticism, he seems to have intended what, 
in the received phraseology of the Schools, is 
called a proximate cause. But instead of being a 
fanciful assumption, like Boerhaave's or Cullen's 
hypothesis of the proximate cause of inflammation. 



HUNTLK's PAIHOLOGV. 8o 

he confines the desi^rnation to the morbid act or 
process in which the disease may be supposed es- 
sentially to consist, as far only as it is made sensible, 
or may be legitimately inferred by an induction 
from facts, without admitting aught that the facts 
do not warrant or require. And thus, if we 
look to his investigation of the nature of the in- 
flammatory process, can we enough admire the 
almost wearisome collation of facts by which he 
removes, point by point, all the intervening ob- 
scurity which separates, in our view, the morbid 
from the natural action of vessels, and brings them 
into luminous and intelligible connexion? An 
instance of the boldest use of the term, and which 
well illustrates that use, is that of calling mortifi- 
cation an " act of death ;" but the accuracy of the 
apparent paradox will be acknowledged, if we con- 
trast with the immediate and direct destruction of 
a part, by fire or caustic, a process of mortification, 
which consists of living actions throughout, and 
of which the last act is that of excluding a part 
from participating in the conditions of vitality 
which it is no longer capable of maintaining, and 
of throwing off", as a slough, that which can have 
no community with life and living existence. 

And lastly, if this unity of life, which ever tends 
to preserve the bond of living action, be evinced 
in that interdependence of the parts which is ex- 
hibited in sympathy, it is no less revealed in the 
ever present tendency to Integration, which it is 
evidently the purpose of many of the actions ex- 
cited by sympathy to effect in the natural pro- 
cesses which lead to the repair of local injuries 



86 hun'iek's pathologv. 

and to the cure of many diseases. This power of 
restoration, under certain limits, has scarcely been 
denied by any, and most pathologists have been 
content to admit that the phaenomena of disease 
must be explained in part by disturbing forces, 
and in part by a reacting and restorative power, 
under the name of a vis medicatriv naturo'. ; but 
the latter, under this or whatever other appel- 
lation, will be but an unexplained and mysterious 
agency, a mere facultas occulta, unless we appre- 
hend it in the light of an antecedent unity, or 
law of integrity, which in all life having produced 
a whole, ever tends to preserve and restore that 
which it had produced ; though as the subject 
or agent is imperfect — that is, a mere spontaneity 
actuated into an instinctive adaptivity — and tends 
to lapse from the law which actuates and directs 
it, its power of restoration is limited, the actions 
by which it is intended to be accomplished may 
be excessive or defective, and thus its ends frus- 
trated. And here the province of the healing 
art commences ; to the principles of which Mr. 
Hunter so largely contributed in teaching us 
where we are not to interfere with the ordinary 
course of events, and where, neither trusting too 
much nor too little to the powers of nature, the 
Practitioner is to incite where they are defective, 
is to restrain and allay where they are excessive; 
that, guided by a knowledge of the laws of life, 
he may conduct the disease to a successful termi- 
nation by restoring the balance in which health 
consists. 

If it were necessary to enter more at large into 



HUNTKr's PATIiOLOGY. 87 

the detail of Hunter's labours, I might refer you 
to his work on the Fundamental Principles of In- 
flammation, as to one of the most masterly per- 
formances of inductive investigation, and unpre- 
cedented in the science to w^hich it is a contri- 
bution. But since my already exceeded limits 
only permit me to select one or tw^o instances in 
further illustration of the merits of a work, which 
first deserved the title of an investigation of the 
Principles of inflammation, let me remind you 
that, if in his researches on Ulceration, in con- 
nexion with the functions of the absorbent vessels, 
we find him creating a new branch of science, it 
was by his elucidation of the process of Adhesion 
that he principally conferred on surgery a scien- 
tific character. The knowledge of this mode of 
union in wounds has eminently contributed to 
rescue surgery from the opprobrium of unsuccess- 
ful operations, and to simplify and give success 
to their after-treatment ; and has been no less in- 
fluential in raising surgery from a rude and me- 
chanical art to the dignity of a science. 

Recollect too, that in tracing the nature and 
results of inflammatory action, Hunter has eluci- 
dated the principles by which we obtain insight 
into the largest and most important class of dis- 
eases, which the physician no less than the surgeon 
has to treat, and to the knowledge of wliich, his 
successful, because scientific treatment is, alas ! 
jdmost exclusively confined. We are too apt to 
forget what we owe to Hunter's industry, sagacity, 
and genius ; but the value of his pathological 
labors may be estimated by contrasting the in- 



88 hunter's pathology. 

creased power, insight, and security of medical 
science, since these latent processes have been 
understood, with the feebleness, indecision, and 
timidity of a '* medecine expectante,''' or with the 
ignorance and blundering rashness of our prede- 
cessors. 



APPENDIX F. 

INSTINCT. 

The following remarks on the import of instinct 
are those to which Coleridge refers in the Aids to 
Reflection, (p. 177, last edit.) as in accordance 
with his view of the understanding, differing in 
degree from instinct, and in kind from reason ; 
and whatever merit they possess must have been 
derived from his instructive conversation. They 
are here inserted, in the hope that they may interest 
the reader in connexion both with the passages of 
the preceding discourse, and with the writings of 
Coleridge, on this important subject. 

What is Instinct ? As I am not quite of Bon- 
net's opinion, " that philosophers will in vain 
torment themselves to define instinct, until they 
have spent some time in the head of the animal, 
without actually being that animal,'' I shall en- 
deavour to explain the use of the term. I shall 
not think it necessary to controvert the opinions 
which have been offered on this subject, whether 
the ancient doctrine of Descartes, who supposed 



INSTINCT. 89 

that animals were mere machines ; or the modern 
one of Lamarck, who attributes instincts to habits 
impressed upon the organs of animals, by the con- 
stant efflux of the nervous fluid to these organs, to 
which it has been determined in their efforts to 
perform certain actions, to which their necessities 
have given birth. And it will be here premature, 
to offer any refutation of the opinions of those who 
contend for the identity of this faculty with reason, 
and maintain that all the actions of animals are the 
result of invention and experience ; an opinion 
maintained with considerable plausibility by Dr. 
Darwin. 

Perhaps the most ready and certain mode of 
coming to a conclusion in this intricate enquiry, 
will be by the apparently circuitous route of de- 
termining, first, what we do not mean by the word. 
Now we certainly do not mean, in the use of the 
term, any act of the vital power in the production 
or maintenance of an organ : nobody thinks of 
saying that the teeth grow by instinct, or that 
when the muscles are increased in vigour and size 
in consequence of exercise, it is from such a cause 
or principle. Neither do we attribute instinct to 
the direct functions of the organs in providing for 
the continuance and sustentation of the whole co- 
organized body. No one talks of the liver secreting 
bile, or of the heart acting for the propulsion of 
the blood, by instinct. Some, indeed, have main- 
tained that breathing, even voiding the excrement 
and urine are instinctive operations ; but surely 
these, as well as the former, are automatic, or at 
least are th<' necessary result of the organization 



90 INSTINCT. 

of the parts in and by which the actions are pro- 
duced. These instances seem to be, if I may so 
say, below instinct. But again, we do not attri- 
bute instinct to any actions preceded by a will 
conscious of its whole purpose, calculating its 
effects, and predetermining its consequences, nor 
to any exercise of the intellectual powers, of which 
the whole scope, aim, and end are intellectual. In 
other terms, no man, who values his words, will 
talk of the instinct of a Howard, or of the in- 
stinctive operations of a Newton or Leibnitz in 
those sublime efforts, which ennoble and cast a 
lustre, not less on the individuals than on the 
whole human race. 

To what kind or mode of action shall we then 
look for the legitimate application of the term ? 
In answer to this query, we may, I think, without 
fear of the consequences, put the following cases, 
as exemplifying and justifying the use of the term 
Instinct in an appropriate sense. First : when 
there appears an action, not included either in the 
mere functions of life acting within the sphere of 
its own organismus ; nor yet an action attributable 
to the intelligent will or reason ; yet, at the same 
time, not referable to any particular organ, — we 
then declare the presence of an Instinct. We might 
illustrate this in the instance of a bull-calf butting 
before he has horns, in which the action can have 
no reference to its internal ceconomy, to the pre- 
sence of a particular organ, or to an intelligent will. 
Secondly, likewise (if it be not indeed included in 
the first) we attribute Instinct, where the organ 
is present; if only the act is equally anterior to all 



INSTINCT. 91 

possible experience on the part of the individual 
agent, as for instance, when the beaver employs 
its tail for the construction of its dwelling, the 
tailor-bird its bill for the formation of its pensile 
habitation, the spider its spinning organ for fabri- 
cating its artfully woven nets, or the viper its 
poison fang for its defence. And lastly, generally 
where there is an act of the whole body as one ani- 
mal, not referable to a will conscious of its purpose, 
nor to its mechanism, or to a habit derived from 
experience, or previous frequent use. Here with 
most satisfaction, and without doubt of the propriety 
of the word, we declare an Instinct ; as examples of 
which, we may adduce the migratory habits of 
birds ; the social instincts of the bees, the con- 
struction of their habitations composed of cells 
formed with geometrical precision, adapted in 
capacity to different orders of the society, and 
forming storehouses for containing a supply of 
provisions, — not to mention similar instances in 
wasps, ants, termites ; and the endless contrivances 
for protecting the future progeny. 

But if it be admitted that we have rightly stated 
the application of the term, what we may ask is 
contained in the examples adduced, or what infe- 
rences are we to make as to the nature of Instinct 
itself, as a source and principle of action ? We 
shall perhaps best aid ourselves in the enquiry by 
an example, and let us take a very familiar one of 
a caterpiUar taking its food. The caterpillar seeks 
at once the plant, which furnislies the appropriate 
aliment, and this even as soon as it creeps from 
the ovum ; and the food being taken into the 



92 INSTINCT. 

stomach, the nutritious part is separated from the 
innutritious, and is disposed of for the support of 
the animal. The question then is, what is con- 
tained in this instance of instinct? In the first 
place, what does the vital power in the stomach 
do, if we generalize the account of the process, or 
express it in its most general terms ? Manifestly 
it selects and applies appropriate means to an im- 
mediate end prescribed by the constitution — first, 
of the particular organ, and then of the whole 
body or organismus. This we have admitted is not 
instinct. But what does the caterpillar do ? Does 
it not also select and apply appropriate means 
to an immediate end, prescribed by its particular 
organization and constitution? But there is some- 
thing more, it does this according to circum- 
stances ; — and this we call Instinct. But may there 
not be still something more invplved ? What shall 
we say of Hiiber's Humble-bees? A dozen of 
these were put under a bell glass along with a 
comb, of about ten silken coccoons, so unequal in 
height as not to be capable of standing steadily. 
To remedy this, two or three of the humble bees 
got upon the comb, stretched themselves over its 
edge, and with their heads downwards, fixed their 
fore feet on the table on which the comb stood, 
and so with their hind feet kept the comb from 
falling. When these were weary others took their 
places. In this constrained and painful posture, 
fresh bees relieving their comrades at intervals, 
and each working in its turn, did these aflPectionate 
little insects support the comb for nearly three 
days ; at the end of which time they had prepared 



INSTIXCT. 93 

sufficient wax to build pillars with it. And what 
is still further curious, the first pillars having got 
displaced, the bees had again recourse to the same 
manoeuvre. What then is involved in this case ? 
Evidently the same selection and appropriation 
of means to an immediate end as before ; but, 
observe ! according to varyinor circumstances. 

And here we are puzzled ; — for this becomes 
understanding. At least no naturalist, however 
predetermined to contrast and oppose instinct to 
understanding, but ends at last in facts, in which 
he himself can make out no difference. But are 
we hence to conclude that the instinct is the 
same, and identical with the human understand- 
ing? — Certainly not; — though the difference is 
not in the essential of the definition, but in an 
addition to, or modification of, that which is 
essentially the same in both. In those cases 
namely, as that which we have last adduced, in 
which instinct assumes the semblance of under- 
standing, the act indicative of instinct is not clearly 
prescribed by the constitution or laws of the 
animals peculiar organization, but arises out of 
the constitution and previous circumstances of 
the animal, and those habits, wants, and that pre- 
determined sphere of acti( n and operation which 
belong to the Race, and beyond the limits of 
which it does not pass. If this be the case, I may 
venture to assert that I have determined an appro- 
priate sense for Instinct : — namely, that it is a 
Power of selecting and applying appropriate means 
to an immediate end, according to (;ircumstances, 
and the c han^cs of circumstances, \\\vsv \w\nix 



94 IXSTTNCT. 

variable and varying ; but yet so as to be referable 
to the general habits, arising out of the constitution 
and previous circumstances of the animal, con- 
sidered not as an individual, but as a Race. 

We may here, perhaps, most fitly explain the 
error of those who contend for the identity of 
Reason and Instinct, and believe that the actions 
of animals are the result of invention and expe- 
rience. They have no doubt been deceived in 
their investigation of instinct, by an efficient cause 
simulating a final cause ; and the defect in their 
reasoning has arisen, in consequence of observing 
in the instinctive operations of animals the adap- 
tation of means to a relative end, from the assump- 
tion of a deliberate purpose. To this freedom or 
choice in action and purpose, instinct, in any ap- 
propriate sense of the word, cannot apply, and to 
justify and explain its introduction, we must have 
recourse to other and higher faculties than any 
manifested in the operations of instinct. It is 
evident, namely, in turning our attention to the 
distinguishing character of human actions, that 
there is, as in the inferior animals, a selection and 
appropriation of means to ends — but it is (not 
only according to circumstances, not only accord- 
ing to varying circumstances, but it is) according 
to varying Purposes. But this is an attribute of 
the intelligent will, and no longer even mere 
understanding. 

And here let me observe that the difficulty and 
delicacy of this investigation are greatly increased 
by our not considering the understanding (even our 
own) in itself, and as it would be were it not 



IXSTINCT. 95 

accompanied with, and modified by, the coopera- 
tion of the will, the moral feeling, and that faculty, 
perhaps best distinguished by the name of Reason, 
of determining that which is universal and neces- 
sary, of fixing laws and principles whether specu- 
lative or practical, and of contemplating a final 
purpose or end. This intelligent will, — having a 
self-conscious purpose, under the guidance and 
light of the reason, by which its acts are made to 
bear as a whole upon some end in and for itself, 
and to which the understanding is subservient as 
an organ or the faculty of selecting and appro- 
priating the means — seems best to account for that 
progressiveness of the human race, which so 
evidently marks an insurmountable distinction and 
impassable barrier between man and the inferior 
animals ; but which would be inexplicable were 
there no other diflerence than in the degree of 
their intellectual faculties. 

Man doubtless has his instincts, even in com- 
mon with the inferior animals, and many of these 
are the germs of some of the best feelings of his 
nature. What, amongst many, might 1 present 
as a better illustration, or more beautiful instance, 
than the storge or maternal instinct ? But man's 
instincts are elevated and ennobled by the moral 
ends and purposes of his being. He is not des- 
tined to be the slave of blind impulses, a vessel 
purpose-less, unmeant. He is constituted, by his 
moral and intelligent will, to be the first freed 
being, the master-work and the end, of nature ; 
but this freedom and high office can only co-exist 
with fenltv and devotion, to the service of truth 



96 i>fsTrNCT. 

and virtue. And though we may even be per- 
mitted to use the term Instinct, in order to desig- 
nate those high impulses, vi^hich in the minority 
of man's rational being shape his acts uncon- 
sciously to ultimate ends, and vs^hich in consti- 
tuting the very character and impress of the hu- 
manity reveal the guidance of Providence ; yet 
the convenience of the phrase, and the vs^ant of 
any other distinctive appellation for an influence 
de supra working unconsciously in and on the 
whole human race, should not induce us to forget 
that the term Instinct is only strictly applicable to 
the Adaptive Power, as the faculty, even in its 
highest proper form, of selecting and adapting 
appropriate means to proximate ends according to 
varying circumstances, — a faculty which however 
only differs from human understanding, in con- 
sequence of the latter being enlightened by rea- 
son, — and that the principles, which actuate man 
as ultimate ends, and are designed for his con- 
scious possession and guidance, are best and 
most properly named Ideas. 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 



CONTENTS. 

Life as a Law. — Division of natural science into Physiography, Physi- 
ology, and Physiogony. — Import of Pliysiogony as History of Nature. 
Types, as significant forms of Organization, and as a language of Na- 
ture. — Scheme of the ascent of animal Life. — Organic Types of 
Zoophyta: Articulata: MoUusca : Pisces: Aves : Reptilia: Mammalia. 
— Gradative perfection and final aim of animated being. — Principle of 
the multiplication of forms. — Intermediate state of life and mind in the 
Passions. — Concluding observations. 



" It is with sciences as with trees. If it be your purpose to make 
some particular use of the tree, you need not concern yourself about 
the roots. But if you wish to transfer it into another soil, it is then 
safer to employ the roots than the scions. Thus the mode of teaching, 
most common at present, exhibits clearly enough the trunks, as it were, 
of the sciences, and those too of handsome growth ; but, nevertheless, 
without the roots, valuable and convenient as they undoubtedly are to 
the carpenter, they are useless to the planter. But if you have at heart 
the advancement of education, as that which proposes to itself the 
general discipline of the mind for its end and aim, be less anxious 
concerning the trunks, and let it be your care that the roots should be 
extracted entire, even though a small portion of the soil should adhere 
to them : so that, at all events, you may be able, by this means, both 
to review your own scientific acquirements, remeasuring as it were the 
steps of your knowledge for your own satisfaction, and at the same 
time transplant it into the minds of others, just as it grew in your 

own." BACON. 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 



In the course of lectures of this year, I now 
proceed to the concluding portion of the ardu- 
ous undertaking of explaining to an enlight- 
ened audience the structure and economy of 
the animal creation at large ; — an undertaking 
from which I should have shrunk except from 
a sense of duty and of what I owed to my 
character, and to the promotion of the objects 
of our College, in the cultivation of science, 
and the advancement of our own profession. I 
will add, too, that I have been encouraged by 
the hope that I might excite in the minds of 
my junior auditors a love and an enthusiasm 
for the cultivation of natural science, not 
merely for the pha?nomena, and particular 
facts which it presents, however interesting in 
themselves, but as they are the workings and 
manifestations of Laws, and the revelations of 
Reason and of Will. 

Besides, without the observation and study 
of nature, our thoughts want an external reality 
which the mind of itself cannot afford. As 
(according to our imniorlal Shakspcarc), 

the eye sees not itself 
But by reflection, by some outward thinpr, 



100 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

SO external nature serves as a mirror, in and 
by which our inward being is reflected and 
made intelligible. At the same time, in the 
calm and disinterested pursuit of truth af- 
forded by nature, we may fortify our minds 
against the allurements of the world, and find 
consolation under its disappointments and 
afflictions. 

If I have in any degree succeeded in what 
I conceived to be the legitimate design of these 
Lectures, I shall have contributed to rescue 
Hunter's character from the charge of ill 
founded and visionary opinions, and to main- 
tain his peculiar and almost exclusive merit, in 
laying the foundation and in fixing the princi- 
ples of scientific physiology, by banishing hy- 
potheses, fictions, and arbitrary assumptions, 
and by considering Life as a Law — assigning 
to it a perpetual antecedence to all the sensible 
phoenomena of animation, — and as a measure 
common to all its agencies and particular 
manifestations; and, in that very conception 
of a Law, implying that it is a power anterior 
(in the order of thought) to organization, which 
yet it animates, sustains, and repairs, — a power 
originative, and constructive of an organiza- 
tion, in which it continues to manifest itself in 
all the forms and actions of animated beings. 

This idea, which led Hunter, step by step, 
for its illustration to the formation of the 
great assemblage of significant facts contained 
within these walls, cheered and emboldened 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 101 

me in the difficult task of presenting to you, 
in a scientific form, the facts disclosed by 
the organic and animated world. Under the 
light of this Idea, and with a view to its in- 
telligible development, allow me to remind 
you that the three great divisions into one or 
other of which all natural science resolves 
itself are : 

Physiography, or Description of Nature ; 

Physiology, or Theory of Nature; and, lastly, 

Physiogony, or History of Nature. 

The office of the first, or Physiography, is 
to enumerate and delineate the effects and 
products of nature as they appear. Its sphere 
is that of sensible experience, of appearances, 
in contradistinction from truths drawn from 
immediate facts by inference. The subject 
matter is not unhappily entitled by elder 
naturalists Natura iiahuata, or nature consi- 
dered passively ; and the result may be com- 
pared to an immense family piece, the figures 
of which are all portraits. 

The office of the second, or of Physiology, 
is, first, to deduce by inference the rules or 
principles by which the innumerable facts of 
physiography may be reduced into manage- 
able order, either in reference to the conveni- 
ence of our faculties, which is tiie principle of 
all artificial classification, or in relation to the 
objects themselves, which (should it ever be 
realized) will be the ground of a natural classi- 
fication. Secondly, it is the office of physio- 



102 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

logy likewise to ascertain the powers, which 
must be inferred from the phsenomena, and 
the laws under which they act ; in other words, 
to ascertain the idea of life and its constituent 
forces as far as it is common to all living 
bodies. 

The third, or Physiogony, regards the facts 
and appearances of the natural world as a 
series of actions, and Nature itself as an agent, 
acting under the analogy of a will and the pur- 
suit of a purpose ; — in what sense, and whether 
by a necessary fiction of science, or with some 
more substantial ground, we leave here unde- 
termined. Physiogony too, no less than phy- 
siology, investigates the principles of life ; 
but this again principally in reference to the 
original construction of living bodies, and to 
the productive powers, or their formative prin- 
ciple. The distinctive aim, then, of physio- 
gony is to present a History of Nature, and, 
as in all other history, to discover in the past 
the solution of the present, and in both the an- 
ticipation of the future. If it be possible in 
one sentence to convey the sort and degree of 
interest, which the object of physiogony or the 
history of Nature is calculated to inspire, I 
might say, that its object is to exhibit every 
order of living beings, from the polypi to the 
mammalia, as so many embryonic states of an 
organism, to which nature from the beginning- 
had tended, but which Nature alone could not 
realize — to exhibit Nature as labouring in 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 103 

birth with man. It was this Idea which 
enabled me, in former lectures, to present to 
you Nature's living products, as so many 
significant Types of the great process which 
she is ever tending to complete in the evolution 
of the organic realm. In each stage of the 
ascending scale of living beings we see, w4th 
evidence increasing directly as the ascent, at 
once the opposition and the harmony of the 
two great tendencies w liich must be regarded 
as the main factors or constitutive agents in 
this great work of Nature, namely — that of 
Nature tending to integrate all into one com- 
prehensive whole, and, consequently, retaining 
each part, and, as in vegetation, building upon 
herself; and on the other hand, the tendency to 
individuality in the parts, and for this purpose 
the iiisus in each to detach itself from the pre- 
ceding or to supersede them, now by building 
the new edifice out of the materials of its more 
rude predecessor, and now by destruction, as 
one who, by the force of the vault, should 
crush the platform from which he had taken 
the spring. Hence the states, which the indi- 
vidual passes through in all the epochs of its 
embryonic being, and which having been dis- 
appear, are preserved in Nature, and maintain 
the rank of external and abiding forms. And 
thus the aim of physiogony is to present the 
history of Nature as preface and portion of 
the history of man, the knowledge of Nature 
as a branch of self-knowledge. 



104 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

Such were the motives that incited me, and 
the prospects that encouraged me, to introduce 
the physiographic details, which form the main 
body of these Lectures, with an attempt to de- 
cypher the forms and characters impressed 
thereon. Not that I could expect to exhibit a 
system of natural history, or was rash enough 
to attempt it ; but, endeavouring to follow the 
steps of the immortal Hunter, that I might 
map out the bounds and limits of the science, 
and attempt to demonstrate the principles upon 
which such a science might be constructed, 
and the main operative powers into which the 
agency of nature must distinguish itself. And 
if attempts of this kind may be regarded, like 
certain geometrical curves, as endless approx- 
imations without the possibility of attainment 
or coincidence ; yet, be it remembered, that 
approximations may be made, and that every 
step is one of ascent, widening both the retro- 
spect and prospect, and giving us power and 
insight for the further discovery of truth. 

I have not indeed hidden from myself the 
difficulties and discouragements of my under- 
taking. Under the training, and with the dis- 
cipline and habits of mind general in this 
country, and from causes in the main highly 
honorable to our character, an almost exclusive 
value has been given to pursuits and inven- 
tions of immediate and palpable utility. Our 
highest aim is to be men of sense : and this is 
as it should be, were it not that too often the 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 105 

man of the senses, who resolutely confines his 
knowledge to the mipressions on his senses, 
is mistaken for the man of sense;— so often, 
indeed, that it is not unfrequently expedient 
to remind a disputant, that the most certain, 
and hitherto the most important of all sciences, 
the Mathematics I mean, is grounded on the 
intuitions of the sense, in contradistinction 
from, and exclusive of, the impressions on the 
senses. It is well that we should be men of 
sense, but not, even in the highest import of 
the term, men of sense exclusively ; and I 
venture to assert, that the man who acknow- 
ledges no truth and no reality in any subject, 
which he cannot reduce, in imagination at 
least, to weight, measure, or colour, lives in 
the eclipse of the better half of his intellectual 
being. He may be a tolerable mathematician, 
a philosopher he cannot be. With the dia- 
grams of abstraction he may be conversant 
and even familiar, but not with that sublimer 
geometry and universal arithmetic, the real con- 
structions of which form the history of nature. 
To the diagrams, such as preserved beneath 
this roof formed the study, and fixed and 
guided the inward constructions of Hunter, — 
which demonstrate in succession that individu- 
ality and integration to a whole are the great 
polar forces of organic nature, that every the 
minutest living creature and every integral 
part thereof acts by a lil'e of its own, and yet 
that all are permeated and sustained by a 



106 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

common life, — to these he must for ever remain 
a stranger, and too probably will become an 
enemy. The philosopher, who dissatisfied 
with lifeless abstract science seeks after real 
knowledge, and will not confine his inquiry 
to the impressions received through his senses 
and generalized under the name of facts, with 
now and then a theological make weight, a 
few religious phrases introduced as substitutes 
for the ideas that constitute Religion, or inev- 
itably lead to it, — he must consent to remain 
unintelligible for the many, and to be repre- 
sented by the many as a man who has sunk 
out of the light of common day, and out of the 
view of common sense. 

And such, above all, must be the case of 
every man who undertakes the department of 
natural history, under the full and distinct 
conception of the words — Nature, History. 
For History has for its subject actions, and 
the results and products of powers in action : 
but actions imply or suppose a Will, a Pur- 
pose, and must be interpreted by desires, 
motives, tendencies, by a something at least 
analogous to purpose, will, desire, and which 
can only be rendered intelligible by a reference 
to these as known in ourselves. But Physi- 
ogony, or the History of Nature, has for its 
peculiar subject the activity of productive 
powers, or the sum and series of those actions 
of which the facts and pheenomena of Physi- 
ography are the product — under the rule that 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 107 

the product of every given power is to be 
received as the measure of its force and the 
index of its direction. If Natural History, then, 
be not a misnomer, an erratum in the nomen- 
clature of science, it must be either the history 
of nature assumed as an agent, or tiie history 
of a phirality of productive powers considered 
severally as agents, but which taken collec- 
tively are called Nature, in the active sense 
of the term ; just as the collective products and 
results are called Nature, passively under- 
stood. The same reasoning applies to the 
immediate subject of these remarks — the in- 
vestigation of the significant forms of organi- 
zation, contemplated as so many Types or 
characters impressed on animal bodies, or into 
which tliey are as it were cast. Now Types 
and characters, variously yet significantly com- 
bined, form a visual language. The Types of 
nature are a natural language, a language of 
nature. But a language is as little conceiv- 
able without reference to an intelligence, if 
not immediately yet ultimately, than a series 
of determinate actions can be imagined with- 
out reference to a Will ; and a consistent and 
connected language no less supposes intelli- 
gence for its existence than it rcciuircs an 
intelligence for its actual intelligibility. And 
though the language should not, like conven- 
tional language, stand in oj)positi()n to llie 
things intended, but be one with thcni, this 
would prove nothing more than that it was 



108 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

not a language only. And this, I scarcely 
need say, forms but one among very many 
objects which we recognize in nature, and the 
number of which acknowledges no other bound 
but the sphere which comprehends life, enjoy- 
ment, protection, and perpetuation. 

I have judged it right thus once again to offer 
to your notice the grounds that led me to adopt 
the scheme upon which the several courses of 
Lectures have been conducted ; and I will 
now complete this introduction to the present 
course by a brief recapitulation of the facts 
that have formed the physiographical part of 
the Lectures, and may serve to justify the 
arrangement of organic beings as a series 
of evolutions from the lowest to the highest. 
Not, allow me to remind you, in supposing that 
there is any power in the lower to become, or 
to assume the rank and privileges of, the higher, 
upon any such fanciful scheme as that pro- 
posed for the invertebrated animals by that 
laborious and otherwise meritorious naturalist, 
Lamarck, — a scheme in which the ground and 
cause is everywhere meaner and feebler than 
the effect, and in which blindness is made 
the source of sight, and ignorance would be 
the parent of mind and thought ; — but in as- 
suming that the ascent is the indication of a 
law, and the manifestation of a higher power 
acting in and by nature. 

Proceeding upon these prhiciples, I adopted, 
as the most convenient, the divisions of Cu- 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURi:. \09 

vier's Rhgne animal, and I presented to you 
a scheme of the ascent of animal life, as indi- 
cative of the law regidating the series of deve- 
lopments of organic beings, — of a law, which 
may be discovered in all the manifold varieties, 
diversities, and richness of the productions of 
nature ; in all preserving a unity in diversity, 
a plan and method in the seeming irregulari- 
ties and even sports of this productive ferti- 
lity. The resulting forms of animal life present 
not a plan which we can consider as the effect 
of any arbitrary combination, or of a regularity 
imposed upon nature by the human fancy or 
understanding ; — it is neither a scale, nor a 
ladder, nor a network; it is neither like the 
combination of a kaleidoscope, nor the pattern 
of a patchwork ; it is no process by increase 
or superaddition : — but it is, as in all nature's 
acts, a growth, and the symmetry, proportion, 
and plan, arise out of an internal organizing 
principle. This gradation and evolution of 
animated nature is not simple and uniform ; 
nature is ever rich, fertile, and varied in act 
and product : — and we might perhaps venture 
to symbolize the system of the aninud creation 
as some monarch of the forest, whose roots, 
firmly planted in a vivifying soil, S|)read be- 
yond our ken ; whose trunk, proudly erected, 
points its summit to a region of purer light, 
and whose wide-spreading branches, twigs, 
sprays, andleallets, infinitely diversili(^d, mani- 
fest the energy of the life within. In the great 



110 RECAPITULATORY LFCTURE. 

march of nature nothing is left behind, and 
every former step contains the promise and 
prophecy of that which is to follow, even as 
the oak exists potentially in the acorn ; and if 
nature seems at any part to recede, it is only 
as it were to gather strength for a higher and 
more determined ascent. 

Without at all presuming to have traced 
adequately in all its parts and proportions this 
evolution of the forms of animal life, I now 
proceed to give a brief outline of the main 
facts of the preceding Lectures in the genetic 
order, \^hich, at the outset, I proposed. 

In the first great division of the animal 
kingdom, or the invertebrated series, the great 
variety, both of external form and internal 
structure, presents us rather with the tentative 
experiments and preparations for the formation 
and construction of living beings, than with 
such fixed types as are manifested in the ver- 
tebrated classes of animals. 

Of the Zoophytes, we found in the Infu- 
soria or animalcida of infusions, as the lowest, 
only a body of a uniform gelatinous consistence, 
at first without special organization ; and then 
as the first attempt, the hollowing out of a 
cavity, which, in its functions, combined the 
office of stomach, heart, and sexual organ.* 

* It is right to apprize the Reader that this Lecture was 
delivered in the year 1828 ; the first course having been given 
in the year 1824. The author is indebted to Professor Owen, 



RECAPITl'LATORY LECTDRE. Ill 

This cavity we found again more distinctly 
evolved in the Polypi of the group of radiated 
animals, as in the kydva or water polype for 
instance, or in the acalephce, of which the 
actinia or sea anemone may serve as an ex- 
ample. But around the central cavity, as the 
first organic part, we saw the other organic 
structures develope themselves, namely, around 
this centre radiated tentacula, feelers, or arms, 
and a special organ for reproduction. And 
here, namely, in the first distinctive stage of 

to whom he offers his grateful acknowledgment, for the fol- 
lowing-valuable note on the curious additions, which our know- 
ledge of the infusory animalcula has since that time received. 
" The researches of Professor Ehrenberg, and their con- 
firmation in most points by subsequent observers, have estab- 
lished the fact that the Infusories possess an organization of a 
strictly animal grade, of a moderate degree of complication 
even in the minutest monads, with a mutual dependence of 
the different systems, and a general subserviency to the well- 
being of the whole. An alimentary cavity or canal compli- 
cated with many digestive sacs characterizes all the lower Infu- 
sories, hence called Polygastria : these have also an extensive 
reticulated ovarium, a large spermatic gland, and two or more 
extremely irritable and contractile spermatic reservoirs. The 
Polyrjastria manifest such modifications of their outward form 
and inward structure, that they can be divided into twenty-two 
families, of which eleven are naked, and eleven are covered 
by a siliceous case. Most, if not all, the species possess loco- 
motive vibratile cilia: many have a maxillary apparatus of 
sharp teeth. In forty-eight species, referable to twenty-one 
distinct genera, Ehrenberg has discovered ocelli, or coloured 
eye-specks; beneath which, in Avihbjophis and Enylena^ 
nervous ganglia arc discernible. The Infusories are very te- 
nacious of life ; and possess astonishing powers of propagation 
by spontaneous fission, gemmation, and fertile ova." 



112 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

the organific process, we might expect the 
first appearance of a nervous system : and 
accordingly, we found around the central cavity 
a nervous ring, which henceforth in all the 
invertebrated animals forms the principal con- 
stituent of a nervous system. We pointed out 
this in the actinia, and in one of the lowest 
kinds, in which we found it distinct, the aste- 
rias ; the nervous ring surrounds the alimen- 
tary cavity, and sends two threads to each of 
the five rays of its star-shaped body. 

Then in the worm-like animals, the Entozoa 
and Vermes, we found that the organic struc- 
tures become more separate in structure and 
distinct in function. The alimentary canal and 
skin, as the first representatives of the di- 
gestive and respiratory systems, a vascular sys- 
tem as the link between both, and a more 
distinct nervous system became manifest. In 
the lowest of the Vermes the alimentary canal, 
though still without subsidiary organs, extends 
itself through the lengthened body, and instead 
of a single aperture, we found distinct aper- 
tures for mouth, anus, and sexual organs. The 
nervous ring, with which the nervous system 
begins, here appears throughout around the 
(Esophagus or entrance of the alimentary canal ; 
but in addition, double or single threads ex- 
tend along the sides of this canal, and we have 
the first approach to centrality of the nervous 
system in the formation of ganglia or central 
points. 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 113 

Again, in the Insecta and Crustacea, forming 
a link with the Vermes, and a diverging branch 
of development, we were presented with the 
especial perfecting of the respiratory system, 
and of the locomotive and instrumental organs, 
as if nature seemed here to perfect the relations 
of the animal with the external world. In 
these, the skin becomes a hard tegument, 
ceases to be itself the organ of respiration, 
and the respiratory organs are separated and 
evolved as gills in the Crustacea, or as stigmata 
and trachecB in the Insects. The firm horny 
tegument is divided into moveable segments, 
and the soft uniform feelers of the lower 
orders are evolved into jointed antennce, max- 
illce, feet, and the various instrumental organs. 
Tlie muscles are distinct, numerous, and their 
arrangement complex ; and the organs of the 
senses become distinct, and acquire a perfec- 
tion \\ Inch we do not find even in the imme- 
diately higher forms of animal life. But with 
this perfection of the external organs, the di- 
gestive and the vascular systems seem scarcely 
to advance. With respect to the nervous sys- 
tem in these, in correspondence with the arti- 
culated type or form of the organism, the 
nervous collar becomes rej)eated in each seg- 
ment of the body, and with the longitudinal 
disposition of the last becomes further per- 
fected. In the first joint, or head, there is a 
complete nervous ring, the u])per part ol' u Inch 
enlarges into a two-lobed gangtiou, fi oni \\ hich 
1 



114 KECAPIiULATORY LECTURE. 

proceed the nerves of the antennce and eyes, 
and below forms a second ^awi;7^07^, from which 
the principal nervous cord of the body goes 
forth as two nerves, which in the next articu- 
lation are again united into a ganglion, and 
from this two cords again issue, again to be 
united at another joint, and so repeated through- 
out the body. 

In the next type of organization, the organs 
of growth and reproduction become more 
evolved ; and in the 3Iollusca, we are presented 
with a perfecting of the internal organs, which 
is to prepare for, and to be more fully developed 
in the higher animals. There is a sinking 
back as it were, in order to draw inward, and 
concentrate the organific energies for a higher 
and more complete ascent. In the Mollusca, 
namely, and first in the Mollusca acephala, as 
the oyster and muscle, the organic structure 
is characterized by the more perfect evolution 
of the respiratory, digestive, and circulating 
organs, and with a correspondent development 
of the nervous system. We find the same 
nervous collar about the cesophagus ; but the 
ganglia are enlarged, especially the inferior : 
there are then two nervous cords that extend 
along the body : and, lastly, as especially 
noticeable, we discovered a posterior ganglion, 
which becomes intelligible as a correspondent 
to the heart, situated at the posterior extremity. 
Again, in the Gasteropoda, we found the vas- 
cular system more complex, the nervous sys- 



KKCAPITULATORY LECTURt:. llo 

tern more perfect, and the sexual organs more 
evolved in the distinction of the sexes, although 
still in one individual. But, both in the Ace- 
p/iala, and Gasteropoda, the organs of sense 
and locomotion, as marking the relation of the 
animal to the external world, are imperfect 
or scarcely appear, and only in the latter we 
find a more perfect organ of touch, and that 
of vision indicated only in the same part. 

In the Cephalopoda the organic structure 
attains a higher degree of development. This 
is observed, in an especial degree, in the ner- 
vous system and senses. In the former we 
find what reminds us even of the brain of the 
higher animals, and in the organs of sense we 
find the eyes partake of this perfection, and 
even an organ of hearing becomes manifest, 
though in a rudimental form. The organs of 
generation become more evolved, and the sexes 
are separated in different individuals. Even 
the rudiment of a skeleton is observed in the 
cartilages, which surrounds the brain, and thus 
first appears as a defence to the noblest organ. 

Such are the steps and gradual advance- 
ment of the development of organic structure 
in the lower classes of animals ; of those, 
namely, that form the great division of the 
Jmei Itbrata. And thus, in contenjplating the 
series, we are presented with the great prepa- 
rations for individuality and integration, which 
we have described as the aim and tendency 
of nature's productivity in the construction 



116 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

of organic beings : — and we trace already a 
structure, fitted in a higher stage, to become 
typical of an inward and central unity, namely, 
the nervous system and brain, the develop- 
ment and perfecting of which is the main 
characteristic of the vertebrated series of ani- 
mals. 

In this second great division of the animal 
kingdom, or of those possessing a skeleton, 
comprising fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammalia, 
the total organism becomes more completely 
evolved, and in man finds that most perfect 
evolution of the different organs, which is in 
accordance with the most perfect balance of 
all, and a resulting harmony of the whole. The 
nervous system here again becomes the repre- 
sentative in its modifications of the more and 
more increasing centrality and unity. The first 
and most significant modification is that the 
central masses of the nervous system, which 
we have seen in the lower classes uniformly 
on the lower or ventral surface, here uniformly 
and throughout take their station on the upper 
surface. Here too we find that the separated 
centres, and chain of ganglia, are fused (as it 
were) into one continuous mass and form, the 
spinal cord, whilst the former arrangement is 
only repeated or retained in the ganglionic 
system. But both are to be subjected to a 
brain, evolved from the spinal cord, and re- 
peating in its highest form the medullary 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURK. 117 

collar, and thus producing the more or less 
perfected unity of the nervous system. 

But this perfection is only attained by 
grades and successive steps of evolution, and 
we are still reminded, even in the higher 
classes, of the lower types of organization. 
Thus as in tJie first and lowest, the whole 
organific power was concentrated in the pro- 
duction of a central cavity, as the rudimental 
representation of viscera, the organs of motion 
were scarcely yet evolved, and of senses and 
nervous system scarcely a trace was as yet 
discovered : so in fish, — as the lowest of the 
vertebrated series, distinguished by having a 
nervous central mass extending along the 
dorsal or upper surface, — we find the cavity 
for the reception of the alimentary and sexual 
organs, the abdominal cavity, namely, the most 
important ; the organs of njotion imperfectly 
evolved, the flesh itself gelatinous, the vertebral 
column answering chiefly the purpose of a 
locomotive organ in the tail, whilst the fins 
but imperfectly represent the extremities of 
the liigher animals ; and the evolution of the 
respiratory system (which holds equal pace 
with the motive) presents itself only as scarcely 
enclosed gills. In the nervous system tlie 
iiigher type of formation is indeed presented, 
but still only indicated : the first great counter- 
parts, the brain and spinal cord, as the centres 
for sensation and motion, arc; scarcely sepa- 



118 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

rated ; the spinal marrow, which in the highest 
is subordinated to the brain, here predominates 
in mass and extent, the ganglionic system is 
present, but its branches minute and without 
distinct ^aw^/m, and the brain itself is scarcely 
more than a series oi ganglia, and a prolonga- 
tion of the spinal cord. The more perfect 
evolution of the organs of sense here but begins : 
the organ of hearing is still imperfect, the organ 
of smelling stands in no communication with 
the respiratory apparatus, and the only faint 
resemblance to an organ of touch is in the 
feelers about the mouth of some kinds. 

Again, as we next found in the lower classes, 
especially in the mollnsca, the perfecting of 
the respiratory apparatus and its dependent 
organs, so in the next higher class of the verte- 
brata, Reptiles, we found the imperfect gills 
converted into a true lung : external organs of 
locomotion become developed, and the bony 
compages becomes a more complex and pliant 
frame -work, adapted to the varying form and 
moving of frog, of tortoise, serpent, or lizard. 
The senses are variously perfected : the eye 
approaches in structure to that of birds ; the 
organ of hearing acquires an external orifice ; 
the olfactory organ becomes the external 
opening of the air passages; and the nervous 
system, especially in the more connected and 
united structure of the brain, manifests its 
more perfect arrangement and structure. 

In the next higher class, that of Birds, we 



RFXAPITULATOKY LECTURE. 119 

found the same process repeated which we have 
noted in the insects, the evolution of the respi- 
ratory and locomotive apparatus. The most 
important characteristic of birds is that which 
is derived from the important relation between 
their economy and the atmospheric air, ob- 
served in their respiration, circulation, muscular 
energy, hearing, and voice. Their respiratory 
apparatus is extensive ; the lungs consist of 
minute cells, and communicate with cavities 
and air cells, which extend through the chest 
and abdomen, and are connected with the cells 
of the hollow bones;— in short, the body is 
permeated by the atmospheric air. Their blood 
is warmer, and circulates more quickly than in 
any other animal. In the organs of locomotion 
we found the muscles endowed with heightened 
irritability and energy ; the skeleton, light to 
facilitate motion, and the anterior extremities 
especially developed and adapted to flight. 
We found the vocal apparatus perfected, and 
the animal gifted with voice and song. The 
senses also are farther developed, especially 
the ear and eye. And the nervous system no 
less marks their higher rank ; the mass of brain 
exceeds that of the spinal cord, and is distin- 
guished by its breadth and rounded form, and 
by tlie more intimate connexion of the cerebral 
divisions. 

In the fourth and last division of the higher 
classes, that of the Mammalia, so named from 
their having mammfP, and suckling their young, 



120 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

we find still farther grounds in the manifold 
and more perfected organization for adopting 
a graduated scale and series of evolutions. In 
their structure they closely resemble man ; 
and the differences between the organization 
of these animals and that of man, consist gene- 
rally in the want of harmonious combination 
of the component parts of the former to a 
whole, rather than in the presence or absence 
of particular organs. In all, there are the 
same organs as in man, but the relative deve- 
lopment of these varies considerably in the 
different kinds, and with the perfection of one 
organ or system of organs, there is a propor- 
tionate defect of other organic constituents. 
The organs for the circulation and aeration of 
the blood have a less predominant influence 
on the economy of the mammalia than in birds; 
but they are warm-blooded, have a heart with 
four cavities, and consequently a double cir- 
culation ; and they breathe by means of com- 
plex lungs, with minute and multitudinous air 
cells. In the organs of locomotion, we notice 
an adaptation to a far greater variety of free 
motion than in birds. The symmetry of the 
skeleton is more perfect than in any other 
class of animals ; and the collocation and me- 
chanism of its parts, together with the subser- 
vient muscular apparatus, enable these ani- 
mals, according to their needs, habits, and 
jnodes of life, to run, spring, climb, burrow, 
swim, or even fly. But the perfecting of these 



RKCAPIirLATORY LECTURE. 121 

organs is especially evidenced in the formation 
of a Hand ; and in its evolution we trace a 
series from the Rodentia, most of which have a 
clavicle, and indications at least of a power 
of pronation and supination of the fore-arm, 
through the squirrels to the Quadrumana, in 
whom it bears the closest resemblance to the 
liuman organ, as the most complete instrument 
for varied handling and delicate touch. All have 
live senses, though it will be unnecessary to 
enter into details, which tend to show that the 
organs are more perfected than in the preced- 
ing classes ; and we may safely affirm that, in 
the whole organic development of the Mam- 
malia, as the highest class, there is a manifest 
tendency to the most varied organization, with 
increasing centrality and unity of the parts. 
This is, however, most clearly evinced in the 
type of the nervous system : the brain predo- 
minates in size, becomes more distinct in its 
parts, and more united as a whole ; and whilst 
some of its components are more developed, 
others are superadded ; the spinal chord is 
more subordinated, and in the ganglionic 
system we have even a central focus in the 
semilunar ganglion and solar plexus. Thus, 
in comparing the brain of the mammalia with 
its innniiture form in the inferior classes of the 
Vcrtebrata, we find that ihe gaitglia,\\\w\\, in 
the fish, are rudiments only of the hemis- 
])hores, have been ex})anded into the now 
iirently j)reponderating masses of the cere- 



122 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

brum, and their shape completed by the wind- 
ing convolutions of the surface ; we observe 
that the large ganglia, which correspond to 
the quadrigeminous bodies, have become rela- 
tively diminished in size, and hidden by the 
development of the cerebral hemispheres,— that 
the cerebellum, with its various appendages 
and offsets, has acquired magnitude and cha- 
racteristic form, — and that the connecting struc- 
tures or commissures, especially the foriiix and 
corpus callosum, hitherto wanting, have been 
superadded, — in short, that by expansion and 
addition, by concentration and change of pro- 
portion, the brain in the mammalia has attained 
its completed form.* And if we have seen 
the organs of reproduction especially evolved 
in the fish and reptiles ; and if, in birds, the 
musculo-arterial system be predominant, with 
a correspondent high degree of irritability, and 
with accordant endowments of free motion and 
of organic capabilities upon which it is depen- 
dent ; it is the nervous system with a propor- 
tionate perfecting of the sensibility, which is 
the characteristic of the mammalia. 



* If the facts in question were evidence less decisive of a 
process of development, the deficiency would be abundantly 
supplied by the curious researches of Tiedemann, on the for- 
mation of the foetal brain {Bildungsgeschichte des Gehirns). 
In tracing the evolution of the brain, he has satisfactorily 
shown the correspondence of the temporary stag-es of its con- 
struction in the foetus to the permanent forms of the organ 
characterizing the inferior classes. 



RECAPITULATORY LEC'Tl'RE. 123 

Here then we arrive at the last consumma- 
tion in Nature, or rather the point in which 
the cycle is completed, when that which exists 
in itself begins to exist likewise for itself. 
We have seen this instanced in the principle 
of life as a productive power ; and, though 
we are neither permitted by our reason, nor 
enabled by our imagination, to conceive the 
productive power at any moment in entire 
detachment and perfect abstraction from its 
product, yet, by reducing the product to its 
imaginable minimuw, (and supposing the 
power to exert itself only in the narrowest 
cycle of reproduction) we obtain the concep- 
tion of a seed or germ existing in itself. In the 
ascending stages — first of growth, as in the 
vegetable realm, and then of growth combined 
with instinctive free motion, as in the insect 
tribes, in more abstract terms, in the powers of 
reproduction and of irritability, we see this germ 
existing for otiiers. Lastly, in the form of sensi- 
bility, we have the power reflected on its own 
centre, and the living thing exists for itself. 
Now there is nothing which can prevent us from 
repeating the same process in a higher form, 
and in which — that which was the apex of 
the former scries having become the base, that 
which was the goal having become the startiug 
fK)8t, and here commencing witli life self-re- 
flected, as already existing for itself, — we are to 
trace it in its progress to a knowledge of its own 
existence. In other words, in the functions of 



124 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

sensibility, it exists for itself as life ; but the 
self-existence still remains an alien and inex- 
plicable thing, unless it shall exist for itself 
likewise reflectively, not as life merely, but 
as mind. The self-reflection must itself be 
reflected. 

But before this cycle is completed, and in 
the pause and silence, as it were, of expec- 
tancy, the physiologist has finished his course, 
he has reached his boundary line, and must 
either turn back to repeat and perfect his 
former investigations, or if he stop at the 
boundary, it is as a spectator and admirer with 
a human, and not merely with a professional, 
interest. Nevertheless this does not prevent 
the commencement of the latter process, of 
the evidently progressive march in a direction 
determined by this ulterior end, from being 
included in the scheme of his proper science. 
Nay, he will have omitted the noblest and most 
interesting subject of physiology, if he pass it 
unnoticed, for there is no possibility of ac- 
counting for a series of phcenomena, but by 
the discovery of some common end. The 
eflicient causes, separately and exclusively 
taken, would no more explain them, than an 
acquaintance with the properties of the wood, 
stone, and cement, with motions of the saw, 
the hammer, and the trowel, would explain an 
edifice, or enable us to determine why it was a 
simple dwelling house, or a palace, or a church. 
The conclusion 1 draw from these remarks is 



RECAPITULATORY LEC IL RE. 125 

this : — that as all the phcenomena of organized 
Nature, from the zoophyte to the creatures 
that connect, as by intermediate links, the 
fish with the mammalia, are to be regarded as 
the gradual evolution of life into sensibility, — 
which process is completed when the power 
of sensibility shall have become central and 
predominant, and have manifested itself in a 
peculiar structure forming a connected system 
in itself — in other words, as soon as there 
exist a brain and spinal cord with abducent 
and adducent nerves distributed throughout the 
organism, so as to be manifestly the superior 
and governing power of the system ; — so, and 
on the same grounds of reason, we must regard 
the mammalia as a process in which, through 
a variety of forms, Nature is experimenting 
the different proportions and possible har- 
monies of the three powers in relative corres- 
pondence to circumstances of soil, climate, and 
habitation, then in reference to the various 
pursuits, in which one class supplies an object 
of desire to another, next in correspondence 
to the free established appetites of the dif- 
ferent classes ; but likewise, and histly, as 
an increased perfection in itself, as measured 
by its more or less perfect adequateness to the 
(irst great principle, from which we have 
deduced organic Nature, and to which we 
must now bring it bark, — the principle, I mean, 
of totality and absoluteness which Natiire 
aims at in the whole, and of \\ Inch, therefore, 



126 RECAPITULATORY LFXTUHE. 

we must seek the measures in a right compre- 
hension of the points that constitute the per- 
fection of a whole, and its comparative ex- 
cellence. 

Now we know that every whole, whether 
of a plant, an animal, or a planetary system, 
indicates a greater power as its producing 
cause, in proportion as the parts are more 
numerous, yet at the same time more vari- 
ous, each having a several end, while yet the 
interdependence of each on the other, the su- 
bordination of the lower to the higher, and 
the intimate union of all in the constitution of 
one, shall be perfected in an equal proportion. 
But as it has been shown before, that every 
whole that is really such, — and not the creature 
of accident, as a pebble for instance, or where 
the wholeness subsists merely in the perci- 
pient, as in a heap of corn or the types of a 
printed sentence, — that every actual whole is 
but the result or (to borrow an illustration from 
the convex mirror) the projected image of 
some antecedent principle, the unity of which 
is exclusive of parts, — there is yet another 
mark of advancing perfection, namely when 
this partless and therefore necessarily invisible 
unity is itself represented by some visible and 
central product, to which all the various parts 
converge, and which therefore represents in 
respect of power that which the total shape or 
exterior exhibits in respect of sight and sense. 
These, T say, give the canons Iw which the 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 127 

comparative interior perfection of every whole 
or integer is to be measured. But every finite 
integer has likewise external relations, and 
here the canons of measurement are obvious, 
namely, the comparative emancipation and 
independence of the integer, from the alien 
external powers, and its comparative supe- 
riority over them, and power of commanding 
them ; — these two being connected by an in- 
termediate faculty, or facility, namely, that of 
adapting itself to its external relations in the 
greatest variety, and under the greatest change 
of these relations. The first is a negative 
superiority of the animal over nature, and of 
itself can never rise beyond diminished de- 
pendency. Thus the amphibious animals are 
comparatively less dependent than the fish, 
which can exist only in one elementary habi- 
tation. Actual independence of Nature would 
exclude the animal from the system altogether : 
it could neither exist as a point in a circum- 
ference, nor yet as a centre in itself, to which 
all other nature formed an endless series of 
concentric circles. Yet as long as it is a 
dependence for its own purposes, and not for 
purposes external to itself, and while it is con- 
nected with choice, or an (nialogon of choice, 
selecting what it can assimilate and repelling 
whatever would interfere with its processes, 
this dependence in the ])hysical sense of the 
word becomes independence in thc^ moral 
use. And \^ hen in rifldition to this a power 



128 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

exists of using external Nature as an alien, of 
using what it neither assimilates nor admits, 
this is more than independence, it is sove- 
reignty. 

In applying these rules to the higher 
animals, to all namely in which the three 
powers or functions of life, reproduction, irrita- 
bility and sensibility, not only co-exist but co- 
exist in a subordination of the former two to 
the third, we shall soon be reminded of a truth 
to which I directed your attention in a previous 
Lecture, the existence, namely, of a variety of 
classes evidently not essential to the system of 
nature in the Idea, but to be explained as 
parts of a process hereafter to disappear, and 
consequently arising from the absence of some 
other result hereafter to come, or if come, yet 
from its imperfection and immaturity incapable 
of exerting its appropriate influences. And 
here it is that we are met by the principle 
of variety, or the tendency to multiplication 
of forms, to which comparative anatomists of 
the greatest celebrity so often appeal in the 
lower orders, the zoophytes, mollusca, and in- 
sects, but without explaining the fact by any 
\ higher principle ; — this same principle, but in 
a more intelligible form, again presents itself 
in this last stage of our investigation ; and I 
venture to assert that it admits of no other 
explanation than in one or other of the two 
following modes, or perhaps in both conjointly. 
The first we have already described under the 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 1*29 

bold but justifiable language of a natural ex- 
perimenting, as if nature were learning what 
harmonies of functions could exist under dif- 
ferent ratios of sub- and co-ordination, what 
the resulting character of the whole would 
be, and what the resulting type or physiog- 
nomic expression of this character. Nor are 
the products of this experiment without their 
justifying use : the same absence of the crea- 
ture, which implies this experimental process 
in order to the completed type of the same, 
requires these temporary orders of animals, as 
proxies and vicegerents in the performance of 
those lower ends, by which a bound or limit is 
placed to the multiplication of yet inferior 
life,— and by which, it may be added, the 
health of the creation is preserved, which 
would be endangered by the excessive multi- 
plication of any one kind, not only in refer- 
ence to the other classes of animals, but to the 
kind itself so multiplied. The other is that 
variety of type, instead of being measured, as 
in all the orders of animals hitherto, by evi 
dences of ascension in the scale of life, admits 
the application of a canon of progressive per- 
fection only to a small number of the mam- 
malia; while the rest nmst be contemplated as 
a degradation, or, to use the language of crys- 
tallography, as decrements from the human, 
assuming the human form as the ideal type of 
the whole class. In short, in all those classes 
or rrenera of the mammalia which would remain, 

K 



130 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

and which could not without derangement of 
the universal organismus be lost, even when 
men, and men in the full prerogatives of hu- 
manity, shall exist in all the climes of the 
earth, and shall every where have civilized 
and humanized nature — in these, I say, the 
former scale of gradual ascent will still be 
demonstrable ; but the rest can be considered 
only as mutilated and imperfect copies by an- 
ticipation of the human, to be measured, not 
so much by what is possessed in each, as by 
what is wanted, and by the necessary influ- 
ence and modifying effect of the latter on the 
former, — even as in the human being, that 
which would have been perseverance and for- 
titude, if a proportionate power of comparative 
judgment had been added, by the mere ab- 
sence of this gift degenerates into brute and 
dogged obstinacy. 

There is yet another point of too great im- 
portance to be wholly omitted, but to which, 
in this stage of my Lecture, I can do little 
more than allude. I have before asserted that 
entire intelligibility can only be given to the 
system of nature by an insight into an ultimate 
end, to which all preceding ends must be 
regarded as at once means and approxima- 
tions, — that this ultimate end of organic nature 
is presented in the achievement of that sen- 
sibility, and the subordination of the two in- 
ferior powers thereunto, by which the animal 
exists from itself, in itself, and, though imper- 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURR. 131 

fectly, for itself — and that in order to the full 
presentation of this ultimate end, nature must 
not only feel, but must know her own being. 
Now, this position is the same as to assert that 
a mind must be added to life, and consequently, 
that a transition from life to mind, at all events 
to a state in which it shall be receptive of 
mind, must be assumed — a transitional state, 
a life still retaining its essential and distinc- 
tive characters as life, but participant of mind. 
And in a process of such deep importance, the 
last step to the consummation of all that we 
still might dare call nature, it may be con- 
fidently expected that even the beginnings, the 
nascent or initial quantities, will be marked or 
revealed in some appropriate fact or phaeno- 
menon. Now I affirm that this indifferency, 
or intermediate state of life and mind, is given 
in the Passions. For I know no other defini- 
tion of a Passion as distinguished from a mere 
appetite (though 1 have looked into the nume- 
rous disquisitions and essays on the passions, 
from Descartes downwards) but this : — That 
a passion is an affection of life having its 
immediate occasion, not in things, but in the 
thoughts or judgments respecting the things. 
This definition, which 1 offer with considerable 
contidence, is however, I scarcely need say, a 
definition of the passions in their completed 
form ; though even of these the mammalia will 
not be found deficient in striking examples, 
such as the vanity of the peacock, the jealousy 



132 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

SO amusingly displayed in dogs, the rage, which 
animals of the feline kind connect with both 
the appetites, — and our friends the phrenolo- 
gists would assist us to multiply instances. 
But these are the branches of the tree ; we 
must go lower to the trunk, and learn to con- 
template passion as the common ground of all 
the passions ; and this ground, or passion in its 
unity, may perhaps be defined as a Predispo- 
sition influencing the volitions, pursuits, and 
acts of an animal, derived from its total life 
and from the obscure half-conscious sense of 
the same in its own character. For the life 
of every animal doubtless has an individual 
character of its own, though it may not be pos- 
sible to designate it bywords, or rather though 
the animal itself is the true word, the only 
appropriate and untranslateable exponent. In 
this, I repeat, I find one great character, and I 
might add end, of the mammalia; and here, 
too, the peculiar connection of the mammalia 
with man is still preserved. We find here the 
base of those mighty agencies by which man, 
in the minority of his humanity, is impelled and 
governed, and which, even in his highest state 
hitherto realized, have not yet come to be 
superfluous : the Reason, which has conquered 
them, has taken them into the household as 
useful and even needful servants, though out 
of that household, like the wild dogs and cattle 
of the uncivilized earth, they are among the 
most dangerous of wild beasts. 



RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 133 

I have merely announced the subject, though 
a fuller inquisition into the passions, as themes 
not separable from any enlarged views of phy- 
siology or even of medical pathology, must 
find a fitter place and opportunity ; and I 
will now conclude, by giving an explanation 
on two points, on which I am very likely to 
be encountered or put to the question. 

The first has reference to my frequent asser- 
tions of the different degrees of perfection in 
animals ; and I may be told, perhaps, that in 
nature all things are alike perfect. Let them 
be so : — the sense in which I have used the 
word neither assumes nor contradicts it. Each 
individual creature, considered singly, and in 
relation to its powers and its circumstances, 
may be perfect (though I confess that the 
argument by which the perfection is proved, 
borders somewhat on the argmnentum in cir- 
culo); — but, assuredly, in relation to some 
one or more ends of the whole system of ani- 
mal life, the perfection must needs be as the 
development, and no physiologist hesitates 
to use this language when speaking of the 
human embryo : and the philosophic view, 
which I have had the honour of presenting, 
regards the whole chain of ascending life as 
so many embryonic forms of the animal man. 

In close connection with this is the objec- 
tion to the use of the word Nature, and tlie 
somewhat irreverent boldness, it seems, with 
which 1 have spoken of her bhnd tendencies 



134 RECAPITULATORY LECTURE. 

and imperfect strivings after form;— in short, 
it is by no means uncommon to meet with 
persons, who consider Nature, but as a safe 
way of introducing the idea of the Supreme 
Being on the most trivial occasions without 
taking His name in vain. Now this sense of 
the word Nature is not my sense of it. I have, 
in the very commencement of these Lectures, 
distinctly declared, that by Nature, I meant 
no more than the active powers impressed on 
matter by the Creator, brought into a form 
of unity for the purposes of science, and im- 
personated for the convenience of language. 
Any other use of the word I reject as false, and 
denounce as no less injurious in science, than 
as erroneous and unsafe in religion. That 
he, who gives a history of nature, must sup- 
pose a nature existing, and that as an agent, is 
to my mind perfectly evident. And as to the 
question between me and those, who contend 
that nature is rightly defined '' The Power 
and Wisdom of God in the creation," and who 
consider it as perfectly synonymous with the 
divine omnipresence, I will propose a very 
short and easy, but very decisive test. Let 
these adorers of Nature, without risk of ido- 
latry, take any volume of physiology or patho- 
logy, and every time the word nature occurs, 
erase it, and put in its place the name of the 
Creator ; and, if before they have proceeded 
a dozen pages, their own moral feelings and 
mere habits of decorum do not render them 



RECAPITULATORY LECTUkE. 135 

sceptical respecting both the truth and pro- 
priety of their assumption, I will cheerfully 
promise to revise my own, with all due dispo- 
sition to the exchanging it for a more correct 
one. 

To add a few serious words : — That system, 
that view, which makes us feel most, and most 
clearly understand, the dependence of all law, 
order, permanence, beauty in nature on a 
power higher than nature, is the most favour- 
able to religion, and the feelings that arise out 
of religious truths. And I trust that this effect 
will rather be aided, than interrupted, by con- 
tending that powers are manifested on their 
opposites, light on darkness, order on confu- 
sion, beauty on indistinction — the Spirit of God 
on the faces of the dark waters, and the con- 
trolling, informing Word of God on a blindly 
striving, but divinely coerced and directed. 
Nature. 



C. Whitlinghan), looks C'ouit, (Jliaiicery Lane, I.oniloii. 



,nv 2^^ i^J^^ 



